.a ftMav 



HENLEACCfc 



. . . . t. 



SUNSHINE SKETCHES OF 
A LITTLE TOWN 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

LITERARY LAPSES 

Third Edition 

NONSENSE NOVELS 

Third Edition 




WHEN MR. SMITH TOOK OVER THE HOTEL HE SIMl'LY PUT UP THE SIGN WITH 
"JOS. SMITH, PROP.," AND THEN STOOD UNDERNEATH IN IHE SUNSHINE 



SUNSHINE SKETCHES 
OF A LITTLE TOWN 

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK 



WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY CYRUS CUNEO 



NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 

LONDON: JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD 

TORONTO: BELL AND COCKBURN 

MCMXH 






All Rights Reserved 



•OPYfilGMT Office 
SAY ^1 1813 



/•>'> 



^ 



PREFJCE rO 

SUNSHINE SKETCHES OF A 
LITTLE TOWN 



\ 



Prefc 



ace 



I KNOW no way in which a writer may more 
fittingly introduce his work to the public than 
by giving a brief account of who and what he 
is. By this means some of the blame for what he 
has done is very properly shifted to the exten- 
uating circumstances of his Hfe. 

I was born at Swanmoor, Hants, England, on 
December 30, 1869. I am not aware that there 
was any particular conjunction of the planets at 
the time, but should think it extremely likely. 
My parents migrated to Canada in 1876, and I 
decided to go with them. My father took up a 
farm near Lake Simcoe, in Ontario. This was 
during the hard times of Canadian farming, and 
my father was just able by great diligence to pay 
the hired men and, in years of plenty, to raise 
enough grain to have seed for the next year's 
crop without buying any. By this process my 
brothers and I were inevitably driven off the 
land, and have become professors, business men, 
and engineers, instead of being able to grow up 
as farm labourers. Yet I saw enough of farming 
to speak exuberantly in political addresses of the 
joy of early rising and the deep sleep, both of 
body and intellect, that is induced by honest 
manual toil. 

I was educated at Upper Canada College, To- 
ronto, of which I was head boy in 1887. From 
there I went to the University of Toronto, where 
I graduated in 1891. At the University I spent 
my entire time in the acquisition of languages, 
♦Copyright 191 2 by The John Lane Company 



Preface 

living, dead, and half-dead, and knew nothing of 
the outside world. In this diligent pursuit of 
words I spent about sixteen hours of each day. 
Very soon after graduation I had forgotten the 
languages, and found myself intellectually bank- 
rupt. In other words I was what is called a dis- 
tinguished graduate, and, as such, I took to school 
teachi»ng as the only trade I could find that 
needed neither experience nor intellect. I spent 
my time from 1891 to 1899 0^ ^^ staff of Upper 
Canada College, an experience which has left me 
with a profound sympathy for the many gifted 
and brilliant men who are compelled to spend 
their lives in the most dreary, the most thank- 
less, and the worst paid profession in the world. 
I have noted that of my pupils, those who seemed 
the laziest and the least enamoured of books are 
now rising to eminence at the bar, in business, 
and in public life ; the really promising boys who 
took all the prizes are now able with difficulty to 
earn the wages of a clerk in a summer hotel or a 
deck hand on a canal boat. 

In 1899 I gave up school teaching in disgust, 
borrowed enough money to live upon for a few 
months, and went to the University of Chicago to 
study economics and political science. I was soon 
appointed to a Fellowship in political economy, 
and by means of this and some temporary em- 
ployment by McGill University, I survived until 
I took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 
1903. The meaning of this degree is that the re- 

viii 



Prefc 



ace 

cipient of instruction is examined for the last 
time in his life, and is pronounced completely 
full. After this, no new ideas can be imparted tu 
him. 

From this time, and since my marriage which 
had occurred at this period, I have belonged to 
the staff of McGill University, first as lecturer in 
Political Science, and later as head of the depart- 
ment of Economics and Political Science. As 
this position is one of the prizes of my profession 
I am able to regard myself as singularly fortu- 
nate. The emolument is so high as to place me 
distinctly above the policemen, postmen, street- 
car conductors, and other salaried officials of the 
neighborhood, while I am able to mix with the 
poorer of the business men of the city on terms 
of something like equality. In point of leisure, 
I enjoy more in the four corners of a single year 
than the business man know^s in his whole life. 
I thus have what the business man can never 
enjoy, an ability to think, and, what is still better, 
to stop thinking altogether for months at a time. 

I have written a number of things in connec- 
tion with my college life — a book on Political Sci- 
ence, and many essays, magazine articles, and so 
on. I belong to the Political Science Association 
of America, to the Royal Colonial Institute, and 
to the Church of England. These th;ligs, surely, 
are a proof of respectability. I have had some 
small connection with politics and public life. A 
few years ago I went all round the British Em- 



Prefc 



ace 



pire delivering addresses on Imperial organiza- 
tion. When I state that these lectures were fol- 
lowed almost immediately by the Union of 
South Africa, the Banana Riots in Trinidad, and 
the Turco-Italian war, I think the reader can 
form some idea of their importance. In Canada 
I belong to the Conservative party, but as yet I 
have failed entirely in Canadian politics, never 
having received a contract to build a bridge, or 
make a wharf, nor to construct even the smallest 
section of the Transcontinental Railway. This, 
however, is a form of national ingratitude to 
which one becomes accustomed in this Dominion. 

Apart from my college work, I have written 
two books, one called "Literary Lapses" and the 
other "Nonsense Novels." Both of these are 
published by John Lane Company, New York, 
and John Lane, London, and can be obtained, 
absurd though it sounds, for one dollar and 
twenty-five cents and one dollar, respectively. 
Any reader of this preface, for example, ridicu- 
lous though it appears, could walk into a book- 
store and buy both of these books for two dollars 
and a quarter. Yet these works are of so humor- 
ous a character that for many years it was found 
impossible to print them. The compositors fell 
back from their task suffocated with laughter and 
gasping for air. Nothing but the invention of 
the linot3^pe machine — or rather, of the kind of 
men who operate it — made it possible to print 
these books. Even now people have to be very 



SUNSHINE SKETCHES OF 
A LITTLE TOWN 



SUNSHINE SKETCHES 
OF A LITTLE TOWN 

Chapter I 
The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

I DON'T know whether you know Mariposa. 
If not, it is of no consequence, for if you 
know Canada at all, you are probably well 
acquainted with a dozen towns just like it. 

There it lies in the sunlight, sloping up from the 
little lake that spreads out at the foot of the hill- 
side on which the town is built. There is a 
wharf beside the lake, and lying alongside of it a 
steamer that is tied to the wharf with two ropes 
of about the same size as they use on the Lusi- 
tania. The steamer goes nowhere in particular, 
for the lake is landlocked and there is no naviga- 
tion for the Mariposa Belle except to '' run trips " 
on the first of July and the Queen's Birthday, and 
to take excursions of the Knights of Pythias and 
the Sons of Temperance to and from the Local 
Option Townships. 

In point of geography the lake is called Lake 
Wissanotti and the river running out of it the 
Ossawippi, just as the main street of Mariposa is 
called Missinaba Street and the county Missinaba 



Sunshijie Shetches 



County. But these names do not really matter. 
Nobody uses them. People simply speak of the 
" lake " and the " river " and the " main street," 
much in the same way as they always call the 
Continental Hotel, '* Pete Robinson's " and the 
Pharmaceutical Hall, " Eliot's Drug Store." 
But I suppose this is just the same in every one 
else's town as in mine, so I need lay no stress 
on it. 

The town, I say, has one broad street that runs 
up from the lake, commonly called the Main 
Street. There is no doubt about its width. 
When Mariposa was laid out there was none of 
that shortsightedness which is seen in the cramped 
dimensions of Wall Street and Piccadilly. Missin- 
aba street is so wide that if you were to roll Jeff. 
Thorpe's barber shop over on its face it wouldn't 
reach half-way across. Up and down the Main 
Street are telegraph poles of cedar of colossal 
thickness, standing at a variety of angles and 
carrying rather more wires than are commonly 
seen at a transatlantic cable station. 

On the Main Street itself are a number of build- 
ings of extraordinary importance, — Smith's Hotel 
and the Continental and the Mariposa House, 
and the two banks (the Commercial and the 
Exchange), to say nothing of McCarthy's Block 
(erected in 1878), and Glover's Hardware Store 
with the Oddfellows' Hall above it. Then on the 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

" cross " street that intersects Missinaba Street 
at the main corner there is the Post Office and 
the Fire Hall and the Young Men's Christian 
Association and the office of the Mariposa News- 
packet, — in fact to the eye of discernment a 
perfect jostle of public institutions comparable 
only to Threadneedle Street or Lower Broadway. 
On all the side streets there are maple trees and 
broad sidewalks, trim gardens with upright 
calla lilies, houses with verandahs, which are 
here and there being replaced by residences with 
piazzas. 

To the careless eye the scene on the Main 
Street of a summer afternoon is one of deep and 
unbroken peace. The empty street sleeps in 
the sunshine. There is a horse and buggy tied 
to the hitching post in front of Glover's hardware 
store. There is, usually and commonly, the burly 
figure of Mr. Smith, proprietor of Smith's Hotel, 
standing in his chequered waistcoat on the steps 
of his hostelry, and perhaps, further up the street. 
Lawyer Macartney going for his afternoon mail, 
or the Rev. Mr. Drone, the rural dean of the 
Church of England Church, going home to get 
his fishing rod after a mothers' auxiliary meeting. 

But this quiet is mere appearance. In reality, 
and to those who know it, the place is a perfect 
hive of activity. Why, at Netley's butcher shop 
(established in 1882) there are no less than four 

3 



Sunshine Sketches 



men working on the sausage machines in the 
basement ; at the Newspacket office there are 
as many more job printing ; there is a long dis- 
tance telephone with four distracting girls on 
high stools wearing steel caps and talking inces- 
santly ; in the offices in McCarthy's block are 
dentists and lawyers, with their coats off, ready to 
work at any moment ; and from the big planing 
factory down beside the lake where the railroad 
siding is, you may hear all through the hours 
of the summer afternoon the long-drawn music 
of the running saw. 

Busy — well, I should think so ! Ask any of its 
inhabitants if Mariposa isn't a busy, hustling, 
thriving town. Ask Mullins, the manager of the 
Exchange Bank, who comes hustling over to his 
office from the Mariposa House every day at 
10.30 and has scarcely time all morning to go out 
and take a drink with the manager of the Com- 
mercial ; or ask — well, for the matter of that, 
ask any of them if they ever knew a more rushing 
go-a-head town than Mariposa. 

Of course if you come to the place fresh from 
New York, you are deceived. Your standard of 
vision is all astray. You do think the place is 
quiet. You do imagine that Mr. Smith is asleep 
merely because he closes his eyes as he stands. 
But live in Mariposa for six months or a year and 
then you will begin to understand it better ; the 

4 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

buildings get higher and higher ; the Mariposa 
House grows more and more luxurious; McCarthy's 
block towers to the sky ; the 'buses roar and 
hum to the station ; the trains shriek ; the traffic 
multiplies ; the people move faster and faster ; 
a dense crowd swirls to and fro in the post-ofhce 
and the five and ten cent store — and amusements ! 
well, now ! lacrosse, baseball, excursions, dances, 
the Firemen's Ball every winter and the Catholic 
picnic every summer; and music — the town 
band in the park every Wednesday evening, and 
the Oddfellows' brass band on the street every 
other Friday ; the Mariposa Quartette, the 
Salvation Army — why, after a few months' resi- 
dence you begin to realize that the place is a 
mere mad round of gaiety. 

In point of population, if one must come down 
to figures, the Canadian census puts the numbers 
every time at something round five thousand. 
But it is very generally understood in Mariposa 
that the census is largely the outcome of malicious 
jealousy. It is usual that after the census the 
editor of the Mariposa Newspacket makes a care- 
ful re-estimate (based on the data of relative 
non-payment of subscriptions), and brings the 
population up to 6,000. After that the Mariposa 
Times-Herald makes an estimate that runs the 
figures up to 6,500. Then Mr. Gingham, the under 
taker, who collects the vital statistics for the 



Sunshine Sketches 



provincial government, makes an estimate from 
the number of what he calls the " demised " as 
compared with the less interesting persons who 
are still alive, and brings the population to 7,000. 
After that somebody else works it out that it's 
7,500 ; then the man behind the bar of the 
Mariposa House offers to bet the whole room that 
there are 9,000 people in Mariposa. That settles 
it, and the population is well on the way to 10,000, 
when down swoops the federal census taker on 
his next round and the town has to begin all over 
again. 

Still, it is a thriving town and there is no doubt 
of it. Even the transcontinental railways, as 
any townsman will tell you, run through Mariposa. 
It is true that the trains mostly go through at 
night and don't stop. But in the wakeful 
silence of the summer night you may hear the 
long whistle of the through train for the west 
as it tears through Mariposa, rattling over the 
switches and past the semaphores and ending 
in a long sullen roar as it takes the trestle bridge 
over the Ossawippi. Or, better still, on a winter 
evening about eight o'clock you will see the long 
row of the Pullmans and diners of the night 
express going north to the mining country, the 
windows flashing with brilliant light, and within 
them a vista of cut glass and snow-white table 
linen, smiling negroes and millionaires with nap- 

6 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

kins at their chins whirHng past in the driving 
snowstorm. 

I can tell you the people of Mariposa are proud 
of the trains, even if they don't stop ! The joy 
of being on the main line lifts the Mariposa 
people above the level of their neighbours in such 
places as Tecumseh and Nichols Corners into the 
cosmopolitan atmosphere of through traffic and 
the larger life. Of course, they have their own 
train, too — the Mariposa Local, made up right 
there in the station yard, and running south to 
the city a hundred miles away. That, of course, 
is a real train, with a box stove on end in the 
passenger car, fed with cordwood upside down, 
and with seventeen flat cars of pine lumber set 
between the passenger car and the locomotive so 
as to give the train its full impact when shunting. 

Outside of Mariposa there are farms that begin 
well but get thinner and meaner as you go on, 
and end sooner or later in bush and swamp and 
the rock of the north country. And beyond 
that again, as the background of it all, though 
it's far away, you are somehow aware of the great 
pine woods of the lumber country reaching 
endlessly into the north. 

Not that the little town is always gay or always 
bright in the sunshine. There never was such 
a place for changing its character with the season. 
Dark enough and dull it seems of a winter night, 



Simshifie Sketches 



the wooden sidewalks creaking with the frost, 
and the lights burning dim behind the shop 
windows. In olden times the lights were coal 
oil lamps ; now, of course, they are, or are sup- 
posed to be, electricity, — brought from the power 
house on the lower Ossawippi nineteen miles 
away. But, somehow, though it starts off as 
electricity from the Ossawippi rapids, by the time 
it gets to Mariposa and filters into the little bulbs 
behind the frosty windows of the shops, it has 
turned into coal oil again, as yellow and bleared 
as ever. 

After the winter, the snow melts and the ice 
goes out of the lake, the sun shines high and the 
shanty-men come down from the lumber woods 
and lie round drunk on the sidewalk outside of 
Smith's Hotel — and that's spring time. Mari- 
posa is then a fierce, dangerous lumber town, 
calculated to terrorize the soul of a newcomer 
who does not understand that this also is only an 
appearance and that presently the rough-looking 
shanty-men will change their clothes and turn 
back again into farmers. 

Then the sun shines warmer and the maple 
trees come out and Lawyer Macartney puts on 
his tennis trousers, and that's summer time. 
The little town changes to a sort of summer 
resort. There are visitors up from the city. 
Every one of the seven cottages along the lake 

8 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

is full. The Mariposa Belle churns the waters of 
the Wissanotti into foam as she sails out from the 
wharf, in a cloud of flags, the band playing and 
the daughters and sisters of the Knights of 
Pythias dancing gaily on the deck. 

That changes too. The days shorten. The 
visitors disappear. The golden rod beside the 
meadow droops and withers on its stem. The 
maples blaze in glory and die. The evening 
closes dark and chill, and in the gloom of the main 
corner of Mariposa the Salvation Army around 
a naphtha lamp lift up the confession of their 
sins — and that is autumn. Thus the year runs 
its round, moving and changing in Mariposa, 
much as it does in other places. 

If, then, you feel that you know the town well 
enough to be admitted into the inner life and 
movement of it, walk down this June afternoon 
half way down the Main Street — or, if you like, 
half way up from the wharf — to where Mr. Smith 
is standing at the door of his hostelry. You will 
feel as you draw near that it is no ordinary man 
that you approach. It is not alone the huge 
bulk of Mr. Smith (two hundred and eighty 
pounds as tested on Netley's scales). It is not 
merely his costume, though the chequered waist- 
coat of dark blue with a flowered pattern forms, 
with his shepherd's plaid trousers, his grey spats 
and patent leather boots, a colour scheme of no 

9 



Sunshine Sketches 



mean order. Nor is it merely Mr. Smith's finely 
mottled face. The face, no doubt, is a notable 
one, — solemn, inexpressible, unreadable, the face 
of the heaven-born hotel keeper. It is more than 
that. It is the strange dominating personality 
of the man that somehow holds you captive. I 
know nothing in history to compare with the 
position of Mr. Smith among those who drink 
over his bar, except, though in a lesser degree, 
the relation of the Emperor Napoleon to the 
Imperial Guard. 

When you meet Mr. Smith first you think he 
looks like an over-dressed pirate. Then you 
begin to think him a character. You wonder 
at his enormous bulk. Then the utter hopeless-^ 
ness of knowing what Smith is thinking by merely 
looking at his features gets on your mind and 
makes the Mona Lisa seem an open book and the 
ordinary human countenance as superficial as a 
puddle in the sunlight. After you have had a 
drink in Mr. Smith's bar, and he has called you by 
your Christian name, you realize that you are 
dealing with one of the greatest minds in the 
hotel business. 

Take, for instance, the big sign that sticks out 
into the street above Mr. Smith's head as he 
stands. What is on it ? Simply : " JOS. SMITH, 
PROP." Nothing more, and yet the thing was 
a flash of genius. Other men who had had the 

10 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

hotel before Mr. Smith had called it by such 
feeble names as the Royal Hotel and the Queen's 
and the Alexandria. Every one of them failed. 
When Mr. Smith took over the hotel he simply 
put up the sign with " JOS. SMITH, PROP., " and 
then stood underneath in the sunshine as a living 
proof that a man who weighs nearly three hundred 
pounds is the natural king of the hotel business. 

But on this particular afternoon, in spite of 
the sunshine and deep peace, there was something 
as near to profound concern and anxiety as 
the features of Mr. Smith were ever known to 
express. 

/ The moment was indeed an anxious one. Mr. 
Smith was awaiting a telegram from his legal 
adviser who had that day journeyed to the county 
town to represent the proprietor's interest before 
the assembled License Commissioners. If you 
know anything of the hotel business at all, you 
will understand that as beside the decisions of 
the License Commissioners of Missinaba County, 
the opinions of the Lords of the Privy Council 
are mere trifles. 

The matter in question was very grave. The 
Mariposa Court had just fined Mr. Smith for the 
second time for selling liquors after hours. The 
Commissioners, therefore, were entitled to cancel 
the license. 

Mr. Smith knew his fault and acknowledged it. 
II 



Sunshifie Sketches 



He had broken the law. How he had come to do 
so, it passed his imagination to recall. Crime 
always seems impossible in retrospect. By what 
sheer madness of the moment could he have shut 
up the bar on the night in question, and shut 
Judge Pepperleigh, the district judge of Missinaba 
County, outside of it ? The more so inasmuch 
as the closing up of the bar under the rigid license 
law of the province was a matter that the pro- 
prietor never trusted to any hands but his own. 
Punctually every night at ii o'clock Mr. Smith 
strolled from the desk of the " rotunda " to the 
door of the bar. If it seemed properly full of 
people and all was bright and cheerful, then he 
closed it. If not, he kept it open a few minutes 
longer till he had enough people inside to warrant 
closing. But never, never unless he was assured 
that Pepperleigh, the judge of the court, and 
Macartney, the prosecuting attorney, were both 
safely in the bar, or the bar parlour, did the 
proprietor venture to close up. Yet on this 
fatal night Pepperleigh and Macartney had been 
shut out — actually left on the street without a 
drink, and compelled to hammer and beat at the 
street door of the bar to gain admittance. 

This was the kind of thing not to be tolerated. 
Either a hotel must be run decently or quit. An 
information was laid next day and Mr. Smith 
convicted in four minutes, his lawyers practically 

12 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

refusing to plead. The Mariposa court, when the 
presiding judge was cold sober, and it had the 
force of public opinion behind it, was a terrible 
engine of retributive justice. 

So no wonder that Mr. Smith awaited with 
anxiety the message of his legal adviser. 

He looked alternately up the street and down 
it again, hauled out his watch from the depths 
of his embroidered pocket, and examined the hour 
hand and the minute hand and the second hand 
with frowning scrutiny. 

Then wearily, and as one mindful that a hotel 
man is ever the servant of the public, he turned 
back into the hotel. 

" Billy," he said to the desk clerk, " if a wire 
comes bring it into the bar parlour." 

The voice of Mr. Smith is of a deep guttural 
such as Plancon or Edouard de Reske might have 
obtained had they had the advantages of the 
hotel business. And with that, Mr. Smith, as 
was his custom in off moments, joined his guests 
in the back room. His appearance, to the un- 
trained eye, was merely that of an extremely 
stout hotel-keeper walking from the rotunda to 
the back bar. In reality, Mr. Smith was on the 
eve of one of the most brilliant and daring strokes 
ever effected in the history of licensed liquor. 
When I say that it was out of the agitation of this 
situation that Smith's Ladies' and Gent's Caf^ 

13 



Sunshine Sketches 



originated, anybody who knows Mariposa will 
understand the magnitude of the moment. 

Mr. Smith, then, moved slowly from the door- 
way of the hotel through the " rotunda," or more 
simply the front room with the desk and the 
cigar case in it, and so to the bar and thence to 
the little room or back bar behind it. In this 
room, as I have said, the brightest minds of Mari- 
posa might commonly be found in the quieter 
part of a summer afternoon. 

To-day there was a group of four who looked 
up as Mr. Smith entered, somewhat sympatheti- 
cally, and evidently aware of the perplexities 
of the moment. 

Henry Mullins and George Duff, the two bank 
managers, were both present. Mullins is a rather 
short, rather round, smooth-shaven man of less 
than forty, wearing one of those round banking 
suits of pepper and salt, with a round banking 
hat of hard straw, and with the kind of gold tie- 
pin and heavy watch-chain and seals necessary to 
inspire confidence in matters of foreign exchange. 
Duff is just as round and just as short, and equally 
smoothly shaven, while his seals and straw hat 
are calculated to prove that the Commercial is 
just as sound a bank as the Exchange. From 
the technical point of view of the banking business, 
neither of them had any objection to being in 
Smith's Hotel or to taking a drink as long as the 

14 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

other was present. This, of course, was one of 
the cardinal principles of Mariposa banking. 

Then there was Mr. Diston, the high school 
teacher, commonly known as the " one who 
drank." None of the other teachers ever entered 
a hotel unless accompanied by a lady or pro- 
tected by a child. But as Mr. Diston was known 
to drink beer on occasions and to go in and out 
of the Mariposa House and Smith's Hotel, he was 
looked upon as a man whose life was a mere 
wreck. Whenever the School Board raised the 
salaries of the other teachers, fifty or sixty dollars 
per anmmi at one lift, it was well understood that 
public morality wouldn't permit of an increase 
for Mr. Diston. 

Still more noticeable, perhaps, was the quiet, 
sallow looking man dressed in black, with black 
gloves and with black silk hat heavily craped and 
placed hollow-side-up on a chair. This was Mr. 
Golgotha Gingham, the undertaker of Mariposa, 
and his dress was due to the fact that he had just 
come from what he called an " interment." Mr. 
Gingham had the true spirit of his profession, 
and such words as ** funeral " or ** cofhn " or 
*' hearse " never passed his lips. He spoke 
always of '' interments," of " caskets," and 
" coaches," using terms that were calculated 
rather to bring out the majesty and subhmity of 
death than to parade its horrors. 

15 



Sunshine Sketches 



To be present at the hotel was in accord with 
Mr. Gingham's general conception of his business. 
No man had ever grasped the true principles of 
undertaking more thoroughly than Mr. Gingham. 
I have often heard him explain that to associate 
with the living, uninteresting though they appear, 
is the only way to secure the custom of the dead. 

" Get to know people really well while they are 
alive," said Mr. Gingham ; " be friends with them, 
close friends, and then when they die you don't 
need to worry. You'll get the order every time. ' ' 

So, naturally, as the moment was one of 
sympathy, it was Mr. Gingham who spoke first. 

" What '11 you do. Josh," he said, " if the 
Commissioners go against you ? " 

" Boys," said Mr. Smith, " I don't rightly 
know. If I have to quit, the next move is to the 
city. But I don't reckon that I will have to quit. 
I've got an idee that I think's good every time." 

" Could you run a hotel in the city ? " asked 
Mullins. 

" I could," said Mr. Smith. " I'll tell you. 
There's big things doin' in the hotel business 
right now, big chances if you go into it right. 
Hotels in the city is branching out. Why, you 
take the dining-room side of it," continued Mr. 
Smith, looking round at the group, " there's 
thousands in it. The old plan's all gone. Folks 
won't eat now in an ordinary dining-room with a 

i6 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

high ceiHng and windows. You have to get 'em 
down underground in a room with no windows 
and lots of sawdust round and waiters that can't 
speak Enghsh. I seen them places last time I 
was in the city. They call 'em Rats' Coolers. 
And for light meals they want a Caff, a real 
French Caff, and for folks that come in late another 
place that they call a Girl Room that don't shut 
up at all. If I go to the city that's the kind of 
place I mean to run. What's yours, Gol ? It's 
on the house ? " 

And it was just at the moment when Mr. 
Smith said this that Billy, the desk clerk, entered 
the room with the telegram in his hand. 

But stop — it is impossible for you to under- 
stand the anxiety with which Mr. Smith and his 
associates awaited the news from the Commis- 
sioners, without first realizing the astounding 
progress of Mr. Smith in the three past years, and 
the pinnacle of public eminence to which he had 
attained. 

Mr. Smith had come down from the lumber 
country of the Spanish River, where the divide 
is toward the Hudson Bay, — " back north " as 
they called it in Mariposa. 

He had been, it was said, a cook in the lumber 
shanties. To this day Mr. Smith can fry an egg 
on both sides with a lightness of touch that is 
the despair of his own " help." 

17 c 



Swishine Sketches 



After that, he had run a river driver's boarding- 
house. 

After that, he had taken a food contract for a 
gang of raihoad navvies on the transcontinental. 

After that, of course, the whole world was open 
to him. 

He came down to Mariposa and bought out 
the " inside " of what had been the Royal Hotel. 

Those who are educated understand that by 
the " inside " of a hotel is meant everything except 
the four outer walls of it — the fittings, the furni- 
ture, the bar, Billy the desk-clerk, the three 
dining-room girls, and above all the license 
granted by King Edward VH., and ratified further 
by King George, for the sale of intoxicating 
liquors. 

Till then the Royal had been a mere nothing. 
As " Smith's Hotel " it broke into a blaze of 
effulgence. 

From the first, Mr. Smith, as a proprietor, was 
a wild, rapturous success. 

He had all the qualifications. 

He weighed two hundred and eighty pounds. 

He could haul two drunken men out of the bar 
each by the scruff of the neck without the faintest 
anger or excitement. 

He carried money enough in his trousers pockets 
to start a bank, and spent it on anything, bet it on 
anything, and gave it away in handfuls. 

i8 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

He was never drunk, and, as a point of chivalry 
to his customers, never quite sober. Anybody 
was free of the hotel who cared to come in. Any- 
body who didn't like it could go out. Drinks 
of all kinds cost five cents, or six for a quarter. 
Meals and beds were practically free. Any 
persons foolish enough to go to the desk and pay 
for them, Mr. Smith charged according to the 
expression of their faces. 

At first the loafers and the shanty men settled 
down on the place in a shower. But that was not 
the *' trade " that Mr. Smith wanted. He knew 
how to get rid of them. An army of charwomen, 
turned into the hotel, scrubbed it from top to 
bottom. A vacuum cleaner, the first seen in 
Mariposa, hissed and screamed in the corridors. 
Forty brass beds were imported from the city, 
not, of course, for the guests to sleep in, but to 
keep them out. A bar-tender with a starched 
coat and wicker sleeves was put behind the bar. 

The loafers were put out of business. The 
place had become too " high toned " for them. 

To get the high class trade, Mr. Smith set him- 
self to dress the part. He wore wide cut coats 
of filmy serge, light as gossamer ; chequered 
waistcoats with a pattern for every day in the 
week ; fedora hats light as autumn leaves ; four- 
in-hand ties of saffron and myrtle green with a 
diamond pin the size of a hazel nut. On his 

19 



Sunshine Sketches 



fingers there were as many gems as would grace 
a native prince of India ; across his waistcoat 
lay a gold watch-chain in huge square links and 
in his pocket a gold watch that weighed a pound 
and a half and marked minutes, seconds and 
quarter seconds. Just to look at Josh Smith's 
watch brought at least ten men to the bar every 
evening. 

Every morning Mr. Smith was shaved by Jeffer- 
son Thorpe, across the way. All that art could 
do, all that Florida water could effect, was lavished 
on his person. 

Mr. Smith became a local character. Mariposa 
was at his feet. All the reputable business men 
drank at Mr. Smith's bar, and in the little 
parlour behind it you might find at any time a 
group of the brightest intellects in the town. 

Not but what there was opposition at first. 
The clergy, for example, who accepted the Mari- 
posa House and the Continental as a necessary 
and useful evil, looked askance at the blazing 
lights and the surging crowd of Mr. Smith's 
saloon. They preached against him. When the 
Rev. Dean Drone led off with a sermon on the 
text " Lord be merciful even unto this publican 
Matthew Six," it was generally understood as an 
invitation to strike Mr. Smith dead. In the same 
way the sermon at the Presbyterian church the 
week after was on the text " Lo what now death 

20 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

Abiram in the land of Melchisideck Kings Eight 
and Nine ? " and it was perfectly plain that what 
was meant was, " Lo, what is Josh Smith doing 
in Mariposa ? " 

But this opposition had been countered by a 
wide and sagacious philanthropy. I think Mr. 
Smith first got the idea of that on the night when 
the steam merry-go-round came to Mariposa. 
Just below the hostelry, on an empty lot, it whirled 
and whistled, steaming forth its tunes on the 
summer evening while the children crowded 
round it in hundreds. Down the street strolled 
Mr. Smith, wearing a soft fedora to indicate that 
it was evening. 

" What d'you charge for a ride, boss ? " said 
Mr. Smith. 

** Two for a nickel," said the man. 

" Take that," said Mr. Smith, handing out a ten- 
dollar bill from a roll of money, " and ride the 
little folks free all evening." 

That night the merry-go-round whirled madly 
till after midnight, freighted to capacity with 
Mariposa children, while up in Smith's Hotel, 
parents, friends and admirers, as the news spread, 
were standing four deep along the bar. They 
sold forty dollars' worth of lager alone that night, 
and Mr. Smith learned, if he had not already 
suspected it, the blessedness of giving. 

The uses of philanthropy went further. Mr. 

21 



Sunshine Sketches 



Smith subscribed to everything, joined everything, 
gave to everything. He became an Oddfellow, 
a Forester, a Knight of Pythias and a Workman. 
He gave a hundred dollars to the Mariposa Hospital 
and a hundred dollars to the Young Men's Christian 
Association. 

He subscribed to the Ball Club, the Lacrosse 
Club, the Curling Club, to anything, in fact, and 
especially to all those things which needed 
premises to meet in and grew thirsty in their 
discussions. 

As a consequence the Oddfellows held their 
annual banquet at Smith's Hotel and the Oyster 
Supper of the Knights of Pythias was celebrated 
in Mr. Smith's dining-room. 

Even more effective, perhaps, were Mr. Smith's 
secret benefactions, the kind of giving done by 
stealth of which not a soul in town knew anything, 
often, for a week after it was done. It was in this 
way that Mr. Smith put the new font in Dean 
Drone's church, and handed over a hundred 
dollars to Judge Pepperleigh for the unrestrained 
use of the Conservative party. 

So it came about that, little by little, the 
antagonism had died down. Smith's Hotel be- 
came an accepted institution in Mariposa. Even 
the temperance people were proud of Mr. Smith 
as a sort of character who added distinction to 
the town. There were moments, in the earlier 

22 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

quiet of the morning, when Dean Drone would go 
so far as to step in to the " rotunda " and collect 
a subscription. As for the Salvation Army, 
they ran in and out all the time unreproved. 

On only one point difficulty still remained. 
That was the closing of the bar. Mr. Smith could 
never bring his mind to it, — not as a matter of 
profit, but as a point of honour. It was too much 
for him to feel that Judge Pepperleigh might be 
out on the sidewalk thirsty at midnight, that the 
night hands of the Times Herald on Wednesday 
might be compelled to go home dry. On this 
point Mr. Smith's moral code was simplicity 
itself, — do what is right and take the conse- 
quences. So the bar stayed open. 

Every town, I suppose, has its meaner spirits. 
In every genial bosom some snake is warmed, — 
or, as Mr. Smith put it to Golgotha Gingham — 
*' there are some fellers even in this town skunks 
enough to inform." 

At first the Mariposa court quashed all indict- 
ments. The presiding judge, with his spectacles 
on and a pile of books in front of him, threatened 
the informer with the penitentiary. The whole 
bar of Mariposa was with Mr. Smith. But by 
sheer iteration the informations had proved 
successful. Judge Pepperleigh learned that Mr. 
Smith had subscribed a hundred dollars for the 
Liberal party and at once fined him for keeping 

23 



Siinshine ShetcJies 



open after hours. That made one conviction. 
On the top of this had come the untoward inci- 
dent just mentioned and that made two. Beyond 
that was the deluge. This then was the exact 
situation when Billy, the desk clerk, entered the 
back bar with the telegram in his hand. 

" Here's your wire, sir," he said. 

" What does it say ? " said Mr. Smith. 

He always dealt with written documents with 
a fine air of detachment. I don't suppose there 
were ten people in Mariposa who knew that Mr. 
Smith couldn't read. 

Billy opened the message and read, " Com- 
missioners give you three months to close down." 

" Let me read it," said Mr. Smith, " that's 
right, three months to close down." 

There was dead silence when the message was 
read. Everybody waited for Mr. Smith to speak. 
Mr. Gingham instinctively assumed the profes- 
sional air of hopeless melancholy. 

As it was afterwards recorded, Mr. Smith stood 
and " studied " with the tray in his hand for at 
least four minutes. Then he spoke. 

" Boys," he said, " I'll be darned if I close down 
till I'm ready to close down. I've got an idee. 
You wait and I'll show you." 

And beyond that, not another word did Mr. 
Smith say on the subject. 

But within forty-eight hours the whole town 
24 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

knew that something was doing. The hotel 
swarmed with carpenters, bricklayers and 
painters. There was an architect up from the 
city with a bundle of blue prints in his hand. 
There was an engineer taking the street level 
with a theodolite, and a gang of navvies with 
shovels digging like fury as if to dig out the back 
foundations of the hotel. 

" That'll fool 'em," said Mr. Smith. 

Half the town was gathered round the hotel 
crazy with excitement. But not a word would the 
proprietor say. 

Great dray loads of square timber, and two-by- 
eight pine joists kept arriving from the planing 
mill. There was a pile of matched spruce sixteen 
feet high lying by the sidewalk. 

Then the excavation deepened and the dirt 
flew, and the beams went up and the joists across, 
and all the day from dawn till dusk the hammers 
of the carpenters clattered away, working over- 
time at time and a half. 

" It don't matter what it costs," said Mr. 
Smith ; "get it done." 

Rapidly the structure took form. It extended 
down the side street, joining the hotel at a right 
angle. Spacious and graceful it looked as it 
reared its uprights into the air. 

Already you could see the place where the row 
of windows was to come, a veritable palace of 

25 



Sunshine Sketches 



glass, it must be, so wide and commodious were 
they. Below it, you could see the basement 
shaping itself, with a low ceiling like a vault and 
big beams running across, dressed, smoothed, and 
ready for staining. Already in the street there 
were seven crates of red and white awning. 

And even then nobody knew what it was, and 
it was not till the seventeenth day that Mr. 
Smith, in the privacy of the back bar, broke the 
silence and explained. 

'' I tell you, boys," he says, "it's a caff — like 
what they have in the city — a ladies' and gent's 
caff, and that underneath (what's yours, Mr. 
Mullins ?) is a Rats' Cooler. And when I get her 
started, I'll hire a French Chief to do the cooking, 
and for the winter I will put in a ' girl room,' 
like what they have in the city hotels. And 
I'd like to see who's going to close her up then." 

Within two more weeks the plan was in opera- 
tion. Not only was the caff built but the very 
hotel was transformed. Awnings had broken out 
in a red and white cloud upon its face, its every 
window carried a box of hanging plants, and 
above in glory floated the Union Jack. The very 
stationery was changed. The place was now 
Smith's Summer Pavilion. It was advertised in 
the city as Smith's Tourists' Emporium, and 
Smith's Northern Health Resort. Mr. Smith got 
the editor of the Times-Herald to write up a 
26 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

circular all about ozone and the Mariposa pine 
woods, with illustrations of the maskinonge (piscis 
mariposis) of Lake Wissanotti. 

The Saturday after that circular hit the city 
in July, there were men with fishing rods and 
landing nets pouring in on every train, almost too 
fast to register. And if, in the face of that, a 
few little drops of whiskey were sold over the bar, 
who thought of it ? 

But the caff ! that, of course, was the crowning 
glory of the thing, that and the Rats' Cooler 
below. 

Light and cool, with swinging windows open to 
the air, tables with marble tops, palms, waiters 
in white coats — it was the standing marvel of 
Mariposa. Not a soul in the town except Mr. 
Smith, who knew it by instinct, ever guessed 
that waiters and palms and marble tables can 
be rented over the long distance telephone. 

Mr. Smith was as good as his word. He got 
a French Chief with an aristocratic saturnine 
countenance, and a moustache and imperial that 
recalled the late Napoleon IIL No one knew 
where Mr. Smith got him. Some people in the 
town said he was a French marquis. Others 
said he was a count and explained the difference. 

No one in Mariposa had ever seen anything like 
the caff. All down the side of it were the grill 
fires, with great pewter dish covers that went up 

27 



Sunshine Sketches 



and down on a chain, and you could walk along 
the row and actually pick out your own cutlet 
and then see the French marquis throw it on to 
the broiling iron ; you could watch a buckwheat 
pancake whirled into existence under your eyes 
and see fowls' legs devilled, peppered, grilled, 
and tormented till they lost all semblance of the 
original Mariposa chicken. 

Mr. Smith, of course, was in his glory. 

" What have you got to-day, Alf ? " he would 
say, as he strolled over to the marquis. The 
name of the Chief was, I believe, Alphonse, but 
" Alf " was near enough for Mr. Smith. 

The marquis would extend to the proprietor 
the menu, " Voila, m'sieu, la carte du jour." 

Mr. Smith, by the way, encouraged the use of 
the French language in the caff. He viewed it, 
of course, solely in its relation to the hotel busi- 
ness, and, I think, regarded it as a recent invention. 

" It's comin' in all the time in the city," he 
said, " and y'aint expected to understand it." 

Mr. Smith would take the carte between his 
finger and thumb and stare at it. It was all 
covered with such devices as Potage a la Mariposa 
— Filet Mignon a la proprietaire — Cotelette a la 
Smith, and so on. 

But the greatest thing about the caff were the 
prices. Therein lay, as everybody saw at once, 
the hopeless simplicity of Mr. Smith. 

28 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

The prices stood fast at 25 cents a meal. You 
could come in and eat all they had in the caff for 
a quarter. 

** No, sir/' Mr. Smith said stoutly, " I ain't 
going to try to raise no prices on the public. The 
hotel's always been a quarter and the caff's a 
quarter." 

Full ? Full of people ? 

Well, I should think so ! From the time the 
caff opened at 11 till it closed at 8.30, you could 
hardly find a table. Tourists, visitors, travellers, 
and half the people of Mariposa crowded at the 
little tables ; crockery rattling, glasses tinkling 
on trays, corks popping, the waiters in their 
white coats flying to and fro, Alphonse whirling 
the cutlets and pancakes into the air, and in and 
through it all, Mr. Smith, in a white flannel suit 
and a broad crimson sash about his waist. 
Crowded and gay from morning to night, and even 
noisy in its hilarity. 

Noisy, yes ; but if you wanted deep quiet and 
cool, if you wanted to step from the glare of a 
Canadian August to the deep shadow of an en- 
chanted glade, — walk down below into the Rats' 
Cooler. There you had it ; dark old beams (who 
could believe they were put there a month ago ?) 
great casks set on end with legends such as 
Amontillado Fino done in gilt on a black ground, 
tall steins filled with German beer soft as moss, 

29 



Sunshine Sketches 



and a German waiter noiseless as moving foam. 
He who entered the Rats' Cooler at three of a 
summer afternoon was buried there for the day. 
Mr. Golgotha Gingham spent anything from four 
to seven hours there of every day. In his mind 
the place had all the quiet charm of an interment, 
with none of its sorrows. 

But at night, when Mr. Smith and Billy, the 
desk clerk, opened up the cash register and 
figured out the combined losses of the caff and 
the Rats' Cooler, Mr. Smith would say : 

" Billy, just wait till I get the license renood, 
and I'll close up this damn caff so tight they'll 
never know what hit her. What did that lamb 
cost ? Fifty cents a pound, was it ? I figure it, 
Billy, that every one of them hogs eats about a 
dollar's worth a grub for every twenty-five cents 
they pay on it. As for Alf — by gosh, I'm through 
with him." 

But that, of course, was only a confidential 
matter as between Mr. Smith and Billy. 

I don't know at what precise period it was that 
the idea of a petition to the License Commis- 
sioners first got about the town. No one seemed 
to know just who suggested it. But certain it 
was that public opinion began to swing strongly 
towards the support of Mr. Smith. I think it 
was perhaps on the day after the big fish dinner 
that Alphonse cooked for the Mariposa Canoe 

30 



The Hostelry of Mr. Sinith 

Club (at twenty cents a head) that the feehng 
began to find open expression. People said it 
was a shame that a man like Josh Smith should 
be run out of Mariposa by three license com- 
missioners. Who were the license commissioners, 
anyway ? Why, look at the license system they 
had in Sweden ; yes, and in Finland and in South 
America. Or, for the matter of that, look at the 
French and Italians, who drink all day and all 
night. Aren't they all right ? Aren't they a 
musical people ? Take Napoleon, and Victor 
Hugo ; drunk half the time, and yet look what 
they did. 

I quote these arguments not for their own sake, 
but merely to indicate the changing temper of 
public opinion in Mariposa. Men would sit in 
the caff at lunch perhaps for an hour and a half 
and talk about the license question in general, 
and then go down into the Rats' Cooler and talk 
about it for two hours more. 

It was amazing the way the light broke in in 
the case of particular individuals, often the most 
unlikely, and quelled their opposition. 

Take, for example, the editor of the Newspacket. 
I suppose there wasn't a greater temperance 
advocate in town. Yet Alphonse queered him 
with an Omelette a la License in one meal. 

Or take Pepperleigh himself, the judge of the 
Mariposa court. He was put to the bad with a 

31 



Sunshine Sl'ctches 



game pie, — pate normand aux fines herbes — the 
real thing, as good as a trip to Paris in itself. 
After eating it, Pepperieigh had the common 
sense to realize that it was sheer madness to 
destroy a hotel that could cook a thing like that. 

In the same way, the secretany^ of the School 
Board was silenced \rith a stuffed duck a la 
Ossawippi. 

Three members of the to\Mi council were con- 
verted \rith a Dindon farci a la Josh Smith. 

And then, finally, Mr. Diston persuaded Dean 
Drone to come, and as soon as Mr. Smith and 
Alphonse saw him they landed him \rith a fried 
flounder that even the apostles would have 
appreciated. 

After that, eveny* one knew that the license 
question was practically settled. The petition 
was all over the to^\Ti. It was printed in dupli- 
cate at the Newspacket and you could see it 
lying on the counter of ever}' shop in Mariposa. 
Some of the people signed it twenty or thirty 
times. 

It was the right kind of document too. It 
began — " \Miereas in the bounty of pro\'idence 
the earth putteth forth her luscious fruits and her 
\'ineyards for the delight and enjo\-ment of 

mankind " It made you thirsty just to read 

it. Any man who read that petition over was 



wild to get to the Rats' Cooler. 

32 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 



When it was all signed up they had nearly 
three thousand names on it. 

Then Nivens, the lawyer, and Mr. Gingham (as 
a provincial official) took it down to the county 
town, and by three o'clock that afternoon the 
news had gone out from the long distance tele- 
phone office that Smith's license was renewed for 
three years. 

Rejoicings ! Well, I should think so ! Every 
body was down wanting to shake hands with Mr. 
Smith. They told him that he had done more to 
boom Mariposa than any ten men in town. 
Some of them said he ought to run for the town 
council, and others wanted to make him the 
Conservative candidate for the next Dominion 
election. The caff was a mere babel of voices, 
and even the Rats' Cooler was almost floated away 
from its moorings. 

And in the middle of it all, Mr. Smith found time 
to say to Billy, the desk clerk : " Take the cash 
registers out of the caff and the Rats' Cooler and 
start counting up the books." 

And Billy said : " Will I write the letters for 
the palms and the tables and the stuff to go 
back ? " 

And Mr. Smith said : " Get 'em written right 
away." 

So all evening the laughter and the chatter 
and the congratulations went on, and it wasn't 

33 c> 



Sunshine Sketches 



till long after midnight that Mr. Smith was able 
to join Billy in the private room behind the 
"rotunda." Even when he did, there was a 
quiet and a dignity about his manner that had 
never been there before. I think it must have 
been the new halo of the Conservative candidacy 
that already radiated from his brow. It was, I 
imagine, at this very moment that Mr. Smith 
first realised that the hotel business formed the 
natural and proper threshold of the national 
legislature. 

" Here's the account of the cash registers," said 
Billy. 

" Let me see it," said Mr. Smith. And he 
studied the figures without a word. 

" And here's the letters about the palms, and 
here's Alphonse up to yesterday " 

And then an amazing thing happened. 

" Billy," said Mr. Smith, " tear 'em up. I 
ain't going to do it. It ain't right and I won't 
do it. They got me the license for to keep the 
caff and I'm going to keep the caff. I don't need 
to close her. The bar's good for anything from 
forty to a hundred a day now, with the Rats' 
Cooler going good, and that caff will stay right 
here." 

And stay it did. 

There it stands, mind you, to this day. YouVe 
only to step round the corner of Smith's Hotel on 

34 



The Hostelry of Mr. Smith 

the side street and read the sign : LADIES' AND 
GENT'S CAFE, just as large and as imposing 
as ever. 

Mr. Smith said that he'd keep the caff, and when 
he said a thing he meant it ! 

Of course there were changes, small changes. 

I don't say, mind you, that the fillet de beef 
that you get there now is perhaps quite up to the 
level of the filet de boeufs aux champignons of the 
days of glory. 

No doubt the lamb chops in Smith's Caff are 
often very much the same, nowadays, as the 
lamb chops of the Mariposa House or the 
Continental. 

Of course, things like Omelette aux Trufies 
practically died out when Alphonse went. And, 
naturally, the leaving of Alphonse was inevitable. 
No one knew^ just w^hen he went, or why. But 
one morning he was gone. Mr. Smith said that 
" Alf had to go back to his folks in the old 
country." 

So, too, when Alf left, the use of the French 
language, as such, fell off tremendously in the 
caff. Even now they use it to some extent. 
You can still get fillet de beef, and saucisson au 
juice, but Billy the desk clerk has considerable 
trouble with the spelling. 

The Rats' Cooler, of course, closed down, or 
rather Mr. Smith closed it for repairs, and there 

35 



SunsMne Sketches 



is every likelihood that it will hardly open for 
three years. But the caff is there. They don't 
use the grills, because there's no need to, with the 
hotel kitchen so handy. 

The " girl room," I may say, was never opened. 
Mr. Smith promised it, it is true, for the winter, 
and still talks of it. But somehow there's been a 
sort of feeling against it. Every one in town 
admits that every big hotel in the city has a 
" girl room " and that it must be all right. 
Still, there's a certain — well, you know how sensi- 
tive opinion is in a place like Mariposa. 



36 



Gliapter II 

The Speculations of Jefferson 

Thoiye 



IT was not until the mining boom, at the 
time when everybody went simply crazy 
over the Cobalt and Porcupine mines of 
the new silver country near the Hudson Bay, 
that Jefferson Thorpe reached what you might 
call public importance in Mariposa. 

Of course everybody knew Jeff and his little 
barber shop that stood just across the street from 
Smith's Hotel. Everybody knew him and every- 
body got shaved there. From early morning, 
when the commercial travellers off the 6.30 
express got shaved into the resemblance of human 
beings, there were always people going in and out 
of the barber shop. 

Mullins, the manager of the Exchange Bank, 
took his morning shave from Jeff as a form of 
resuscitation, with enough wet towels laid on his 
face to stew him and with Jeff moving about in 
the steam, razor in hand, as grave as an operating 
surgeon. 

Then, as I think I said, Mr. Smith came in 
37- 



Sunshine Sketches 



every morning and there was a tremendous out- 
poming of Florida water and rums, essences and 
revivers and renovators, regardless of expense. 
What with Jeff's white coat and Mr. Smith's 
flowered waistcoat and the red geranium in the 
window and the Florida water and the double 
extract of hyacinth, the little shop seemed multi- 
coloured and luxurious enough for the annex of a 
Sultan's harem. 

But what I mean is that, till the mining boom, 
Jefferson Thorpe never occupied a position of 
real prominence in Mariposa. You couldn't, for 
example, have compared him with a man like 
Golgotha Gingham, who, as undertaker, stood in 
a direct relation to life and death, or to Trelawnej^ 
the postmaster, who drew money from the 
Federal Government of Canada, and was regarded 
as virtually a member of the Dominion Cabinet. 

Everybody knew Jeff and liked him, but the 
odd thing was that till he made money nobody 
took any stock in his ideas at all. It was only 
after he made the " clean up " that they came to 
see what a splendid fellow he was. " Level- 
headed " I think was the term ; indeed in the 
speech of Mariposa, the highest form of endow- 
ment was to have the head set on horizontally as 
with a theodolite. 

As I say, it was when Jeff made money that 
they saw how gifted he was, and when he lost it, — 
38 



Jefferson Thorpe 



but still, there's no need to go into that. I believe 
it's something the same in other places, too. 

The barber shop, you will remember, stands 
across the street from Smith's Hotel, and stares 
at it face to face. 

It is one of those wooden structures — I don't 
know whether you know them — with a false 
front that sticks up above its real height and 
gives it an air at once rectangular and imposing. 
It is a form of architecture much used in Mariposa 
and understood to be in keeping with the pre- 
tentious and artificial character of modern busi- 
ness. There is a red, white and blue post in 
front of the shop and the shop itself has a large 
square window out of proportion to its little fiat 
face. 

Painted on the panes of the window is the 
remains of a legend that once spelt BARBER 
SHOP, executed with the flourishes that prevailed 
in the golden age of sign painting in Mariposa. 
Through the window you can see the geraniums 
in the window shelf and behind them Jeff Thorpe 
with his little black skull cap on and his spectacles 
drooped upon his nose as he bends forward in the 
absorption of shaving. 

As you open the door, it sets in violent agitation 
a coiled spring up above and a bell that almost 
rings. Inside, there are two shaving chairs of 
the heavier, or electrocution pattern, with mirrors 

39 



Sunshine Sketches 



in front of them and pigeon holes with individual 
shaving mugs. There must be ever so many of 
them, fifteen or sixteen. It is the current sup- 
position of each of Jeff's customers that everyone 
else but himself uses a separate mug. One 
corner of the shop is partitioned off and bears 
the sign : HOT AND COLD BATHS, 50 cents. 
There has been no bath inside the partition for 
twenty years — only old newspapers and a mop. 
Still, it lends distinction somehow, just as do the 
faded cardboard signs that hang against the mirror 
with the legends: TURKISH SHAMPOO, 75 
cents, and ROMAN MASSAGE, $1.00. 

They said commonly in Mariposa that Jeff 
made money out of the barber shop. He may 
have, and it may have been that that turned his 
mind to investment. But it's hard to see how 
he could. A shave cost five cents, and a hair-cut 
fifteen (or the tw^o, if you liked, for a quarter), 
and at that it is hard to see how he could make 
money, even when he had both chairs going and 
shaved first in one and then in the other. 

You see, in Mariposa, shaving isn't the hurried, 
perfunctory thing that it is in the city. A shave 
is looked upon as a form of physical pleasure and 
lasts anywhere from twenty-five minutes to three- 
quarters of an hour. 

In the morning hours, perhaps, there was a 
semblance of haste about it, but in the long quiet 

40 



Jefferson Thorpe 



of the afternoon, as Jeff leaned forward towards 
the customer and talked to him in a soft confi- 
dential monotone, like a portrait painter, the 
razor would go slower and slower, and pause and 
stop, move and pause again, till the shave died 
away into the mere drowse of conversation. 

At such hours, the Mariposa barber shop would 
become a very Palace of Slumber, and as you 
waited your turn in one of the wooden arm-chairs 
beside the wall, what with the quiet of the hour, 
and the low drone of Jeff's conversation, the 
buzzing of the flies against the window pane and 
the measured tick of the clock above the mirror, 
your head sank dreaming on your breast, and the 
Mariposa Newspacket rustled unheeded on the 
floor. It makes one drowsy just to think of 
it! 

The conversation, of course, was the real 
charm of the place. You see, Jefferson's forte, or 
specialty, was information. He could tell you more 
things within the compass of a half-hour's shave 
than you get in days of laborious research in 
an encyclopaedia. Where he got it all, I don't 
know, biit I am inclined to think it came more or 
less out of the newspapers. 

In the city, people never read the newspapers, 
not really, only little bits and scraps of them. 
But in Mariposa it's different. There they read 
the whole thing from cover to cover, and they 

41 



Swishme Sketches 



build up on it, in the course of years, a range of 
acquirement that would put a college president 
to the blush. Anybody who has ever heard 
Henry Mullins and Peter Glover talk about the 
future of China will know just what I mean. 

And, of course, the peculiarity of Jeff's conver- 
sation was that he could suit it to his man every 
time. He had a kind of divination about it. 
There was a certain kind of man that Jeff would 
size up sideways as he stropped the razor, and 
in whose ear he would whisper : "I see where 
Saint Louis has took four straight games off 
Chicago," — and so hold him fascinated to the end. 

In the same way he would say to Mr. Smith •. 
" I see where it says that this ' Flying Squirl ' 
run a dead heat for the King's Plate." 

To a humble intellect like mine he would 
explain in full the relations of the Keesar to the 
German Rich Dog. 

But first and foremost, Jeff's specialty in the 
way of conversation was finance and the money 
market, the huge fortunes that a man with the 
right kind of head could make. 

I've known Jefferson to pause in his shaving 
with the razor suspended in the air as long as 
five minutes while he described, with his eye half 
closed, exactly the kind of a head a man needed 
in order to make a " haul " or a " clean up." It 
was evidently simply a matter of the head, and 

42 



Jefferson TJiorpe 



as far as one could judge, Jeff's own was the very 
type required. 

I don't know just at what time or how Jefferson 
first began his speculative enterprises. It was 
probably in him from the start. There is no 
doubt that the very idea of such things as Traction 
Stock and Amalgamated Asbestos went to his 
head : and whenever he spoke of Mr. Carnegie 
and Mr. Rockefeller, the yearning tone of his voice 
made it as soft as lathered soap. 

I suppose the most rudimentary form of his 
speculation was the hens. That was years ago. 
He kept them out at the back of his house,: — 
which itself stood up a grass plot behind and 
beyond the barber shop, — and in the old days 
Jeff would say, with a certain note of pride in his 
voice, that The Woman had sold as many as two 
dozen eggs in a day to the summer visitors. 

But what with reading about Amalgamated 
Asbestos and Consolidated Copper and all that, 
the hens began to seem pretty small business,- 
and, in any case, the idea of two dozen eggs at a 
cent apiece almost makes one blush. I suppose 
a good many of us have felt just as Jeff did about 
our poor little earnings. Anyway, I remember 
Jeff telling me one day that he could take the 
whole lot of the hens and sell them off and crack 
the money into Chicago wheat on margin and 
turn it over in twenty-four hours. He did it too. 

43 



Sunshine Sketches 



Only somehow when it was turned over it came 
upside down on top of the hens. 

After that the hen house stood empty and The 
Woman had to throw away chicken feed every 
day, at a dead loss of perhaps a shave and a half. 
But it made no difference to Jeff, for his mind had 
floated away already on the possibilities of what 
he called ** displacement " mining on the Yukon. 

So you can understand that when the mining 
boom struck Mariposa, Jefferson Thorpe was in it 
right from the very start. Why, no wonder ; it 
seemed like the finger of Providence. Here was 
this great silver country spread out to north of 
us, where people had thought there was only a 
wilderness. And right at our very doors ! You 
could see, as I saw, the night express going north 
every evening ; for all one knew Rockefeller or 
Carnegie or anyone might be on it ! Here was 
the wealth of Calcutta, as the Mariposa News- 
packet put it, poured out at our very feet. 

So no wonder the town went wild ! All day 
in the street you could hear men talking of veins, 
and smelters and dips and deposits and faults, — 
the town hummed with it like a geologj^ class on 
examination day. And there were men about the 
hotels with mining outfits and theodolites and 
dunnage bags, and at Smith's bar they would 
hand chunks of rock up and down, some of which 
would run as high as ten drinks to the pound. 

44 



Jefferson Thorpe 



The fever just caught the town and ran through 
it ! Within a fortnight they put a partition down 
Robertson's Coal and Wood Office and opened 
the Mariposa Mining Exchange, and just about 
every man on the Main Street started buying 
scrip. Then presently young Fizzlechip, who 
had been teller in Mullins's Bank and that every- 
body had thought a worthless jackass before, 
came back from the Cobalt country with a fortune, 
and loafed round in the Mariposa House in English 
khaki and a horizontal hat, drunk all the time, 
and everybody holding him up as an example of 
what it was possible to do if you tried. 

They all went in. Jim Eliot mortgaged the 
inside of the drug store and jammed it into Twin 
Tamagami. Pete Glover at the hardware store 
bought Nippewa stock at thirteen cents and sold 
it to his brother at seventeen and bought it back 
in less than a week at nineteen. They didn't 
care ! They took a chance. Judge Pepperleigh 
put the rest of his wife's money into Temiskaming 
Common, and Lawyer Macartney got the fever, 
too, and put every cent that his sister possessed 
into Tulip Preferred. 

And even when young Fizzlechip shot himself 
in the back room of the Mariposa House, Mr. 
Gingham buried him in a casket with silver handles 
and it was felt that there was a Monte Carlo 
touch about the whole thing. 

45 



SimsJwie Sketches 



They all went in — or all except Mr. Smith. 
You see, Mr. Smith had come down from there, 
and he knew all about rocks and mining and 
canoes and the north country. He knew what it 
was to eat flour-baked dampers under the lee side 
of a canoe propped among the underbrush, and 
to drink the last drop of whiskey within fifty 
miles. Mr. Smith had mighty little use for the 
north. But what he did do, was to buy up 
enough early potatoes to send fifteen carload 
lots into Cobalt at a profit of five dollars a 
bag. 

Mr. Smith, I say, hung back. But Jeff Thorpe 
was in the mining boom right from the start. He 
bought in on the Nippewa mine even before the 
interim prospectus was out. He took a " block " 
of 100 shares of Abbitibbi Development at four- 
teen cents, and he and Johnson, the livery stable- 
keeper next door, formed a syndicate and got a 
thousand shares of Metagami Lake at 3 1-4 cents 
and then " unloaded " them on one of the sausage 
men at Netley's butcher shop at a clear cent per 
cent, advance. 

Jeff would open the little drawer below the 
mirror in the barber shop and show you all kinds 
and sorts of Cobalt country mining certificates^ — 
blue ones, pink ones, green ones, with outlandish 
and fascinating names on them that ran clear 
from the Mattawa to the Hudson Bay. 

46 



Jefferson Thorpe 



And right from the start he was confident of 
winning. 

" There ain't no difficulty to it," he said, 
" there's lots of silver up there in that country 
and if you buy some here and some there you can't 
fail to come out somewhere. I don't say," he used 
to continue, with the scissors open and ready to 
cut, " that some of the greenhorns won't get bit. 
But if a feller knows the country and keeps his 
head level, he can't lose." 

Jefferson had looked at so many prospectuses 
and so many pictures of mines and pine trees and 
smelters, that I think he'd forgotten that he'd 
never been in the country. Anyway, what's two 
hundred miles ! 

To an onlooker it certainly didn't seem so 
simple. I never knew the meanness, the trickery, 
of the mining business, the sheer obstinate deter- 
mination of the bigger capitalists not to make 
money when they might, till I heard the 
accounts of Jeff's different mines. Take the 
case of the Corona Jewel. There was a good 
mine, simply going to ruin for lack of common 
sense. 

*' She ain't been developed," Jeff would say. 
" There's silver enough in her so you could dig 
it out with a shovel. She's full of it. But they 
won't get at her and work her." 

Then he'd take a look at the pink and blue 

47 



Sunshine Sketches 



certificates of the Corona Jewel and s^im the 
drawer on them in disgust. 

Worse than that was the Silent Pine, — a clear 
case of stupid incompetence ! Utter lack of 
engineering skill was all that was keeping the 
Silent Pine from making a fortune for its holders. 

" The only trouble with that mine," said Jeff, 
" is they won't go deep enough. They followed 
the vein down to where it kind o' thinned out and 
then they quit. If they'd just go right into her 
good, they'd get it again. She's down there all 
right." 

But perhaps the meanest case of all was the 
Northern Star. That always seemed to me, every 
time I heard of it, a straight case for the criminal 
law. The thing was so evidently a conspiracy. 

" I bought her," said Jeff, " at thirty-two, and 
she stayed right there tight, like she was stuck. 
Then a bunch of these fellers in the city started 
to drive her down and they got her pushed down 
to twenty-four, and I held on to her and they 
shoved her down to twenty-one. This morning 
they've got her down to sixteen, but I don't mean 
to let go. No, sir." 

In another fortnight they shoved her, the same 
unscrupulous crowd, down to nine cents, and 
Jefferson still held on. 

'* They're working her down," he admitted, 
" but I'm holding her." 
48 



Jefferson Thorpe 



No conflict between vice and virtue was ever 
grimmer. 

" She's at six," said Jeff, " but I've got her. 
They can't squeeze me." 

A few days after that, the same criminal gang 
had her down further than ever. 

" They've got her down to three cents," said 
Jeff, " but I'm with her. Yes, sir, they think 
they can shove her clean off the market, but they 
can't do it. I've boughten in Johnson's shares, 
and the whole of Netley's, and I'll stay with her 
till she breaks." 

So they shoved and pushed and clawed her 
down — that unseen nefarious crowd in the city — 
and Jeff held on to her and they wiithed and 
twisted at his grip, and then 

And then — well, that's just the queer thing 
about the mining business. Why, sudden as a 
flash of hghtning, it seemed, the news came over 
the wire to the Mariposa Newspacket, that they 
had struck a vein of silver in the Northern Star 
as thick as a sidewalk, and that the stock had 
jimiped to seventeen dollars a share, and even at 
that you couldn't get it ! And Jeff stood there 
flushed and half-staggered against the mirror of 
the little shop, with a bunch of mining scrip in 
his hand that was worth forty thousand dollars ! 

Excitement ! It was all over the town in 
a minute. They ran off a news extra at the 

49 E 



Sunshine Sketches 



Mariposa Newspacket, and in less than no time 
there wasn't standing room in the barber shop, 
and over in Smith's Hotel they had three extra 
bar-keepers working on the lager beer pumps. 

They were selling mining shares on the Main 
Street in Mariposa that afternoon and people were 
just clutching for them. Then at night there was 
a big oyster supper in Smith's caff, with speeches 
and the Mariposa band outside. 

And the queer thing was that the very next 
afternoon was the funeral of young Fizzlechip, 
and Dean Drone had to change the whole text of 
his Sunday sermon at two days' notice for fear 
of offending public sentiment. 

But I think what Jeff liked best of it all was 
the sort of public recognition that it meant. 
He'd stand there in the shop, hardly bothering 
to shave, and explain to the men in the arm-chairs 
how he held her, and they shoved her, and he 
clung to her, and what he'd said to him- 
self — a perfect Iliad — while he was clinging to 
her. 

The whole thing was in the city papers a few 
days after with a photograph of Jeff, taken 
specially at Ed. Moore's studio (upstairs over 
Netley's). It showed Jeff sitting among palm 
trees, as all mining men do, with one hand on his 
knee, and a dog, one of those regular mining dogs, 
at his feet, and a look of piercing intelligence in 
50 



Jefferson Thorpe 



his face that would easily account for forty 
thousand dollars. 

I say that the recognition meant a lot to Jeff 
for its own sake. But no doubt the fortune 
meant quite a bit to him too on account of Myra. 

Did I mention Myra, Jeff's daughter ? Perhaps 
not. That's the trouble with the people in 
Mariposa ; they're all so separate and so different 
— not a bit like the people in the cities — that 
unless you hear about them separately and one 
by one you can't for a moment understand what 
they're like. 

Myra had golden hair and a Greek face and 
would come bursting through the barber shop in 
a hat at least six inches wider than what they 
wear in Paris. As you saw her swinging up the 
street to the Telephone Exchange in a suit that 
was straight out of the Delineator and brown 
American boots, there was style written all over 
her, — the kind of thing that Mariposa recognised 
and did homage to. And to see her in the Ex- 
change, — she was one of the four girls that I 
spoke of, — on her high stool with a steel cap on, — ■ 
jabbing the connecting plugs in and out as if 
electricity cost nothing — ^well, all I mean is that 
you could understand why it was that the com- 
mercial travellers would stand round in the 
Exchange calling up all sorts of impossible villages, 
and waiting about so pleasant and genial ! — it 

51 



Sunsliine Sketches 



made one realise how naturally good-tempered 
men are. And then when Myra would go off 
duty and Miss Cleghorn, who was sallow, would 
come on, the commercial men would be off again 
like autumn leaves. 

It just shows the difference between people. 
There was Myra who treated lovers like dogs and 
would slap them across the face with a banana 
skin to show her utter independence. And there 
was Miss Cleghorn, who was sallow, and who 
bought a forty cent Ancient History to improve 
herself : and yet if she'd hit any man in Mariposa 
wdth a banana skin, he'd have had her arrested 
for assault. 

Mind you, I don't mean that Myra was merely 
flippant and worthless. Not at all. She was a 
girl with any amount of talent. You should have 
hear her recite " The Raven," at the Methodist 
Social ! Simply genius ! And when she acted 
Portia in the Trial Scene of the Merchant of Venice 
at the High School concert, everybody in Mariposa 
admitted that you couldn't have told it from the 
original. 

So, of course, as soon as Jeff made the fortune, 
Myra had her resignation in next morning and 
everybody knew that she was to go to a dramatic 
school for three months in the fall and become a 
leading actress. 

But, as I said, the public recognition counted 
52 



Jefferson TJiorpe 



a lot for Jeff. The moment you begin to get that 
sort of thing it comes in quickly enough. Brains, 
you know, are recognised right away. That was 
why, of course, within a week from this Jeff 
received the first big packet of stuff from the 
Cuban Land Development Company, with 
coloured pictures of Cuba, and fields of bananas, 
and haciendas and insurrectos with machetes and 
Heaven knows what. They heard of him, some- 
how, — it wasn't for a modest man like Jefferson 
to say how. After all, the capitalists of the world 
are just one and the same crowd. If you're in it, 
you're in it, that's all ! Jeff realised why it is 
that of course men like Carnegie or Rockefeller 
and Morgan all know one another. They have 
to. 

For all I know, this Cuban stuff may have been 
sent from Morgan himself. Some of the people 
in Mariposa said yes, others said no. There was 
no certainty. 

Anyway, they were fair and straight, this Cuban 
crowd that wrote to Jeff. They offered him to 
come right in and be one of themselves. If a 
man's got the brains, you may as well recognize 
it straight away. Just as well write him to be a 
director now as wait and hesitate till he forces 
his w^ay into it. 

Anyhow, they didn't hesitate, these Cuban 
people that wrote to Jeff from Cuba — or from a 

53 



Sunshme Sketches 



post-office box in New York — it's all the same 
thing because Cuba being so near to New York 
the mail is all distributed from there. I suppose 
in some financial circles they might have been 
slower, wanted guarantees of some sort, and so 
on, but these Cubans, you know, have got a sort 
of Spanish warmth of heart, that you don't see 
in business men in America, and that touches 
you. No, they asked no guarantee. Just send 
the money — whether by express order or by bank 
draft or cheque, they left that entirely to oneself, 
as a matter between Cuban gentlemen. 

And they were quite frank about their enter- 
prise — bananas and tobacco in the plantation 
district reclaimed from the insurrectos. You 
could see it all there in the pictures — the tobacco 
plants and the insurrectos — everything. They 
made no rash promises, just admitted straight out 
that the enterprise might realise 400 per cent, or 
might conceivably make less. There was no 
hint of more. 

So within a month, everybody in Mariposa 
knew that Jeff Thorpe was " in Cuban lands " and 
w^ould probably clean up half a million by New 
Year's. You couldn't have failed to know it. 
All round the little shop there were pictures of 
banana groves and the harbour of Habana, and 
Cubans in white suits and scarlet sashes, smoking 
cigarettes in the sun and too ignorant to know 

34 



Jefferson Thorpe 



that you can make four hundred per cent, by 
planting a banana tree. 

I hked it about Jeff that he didn't stop shaving. 
He went on just the same. Even when Johnson, 
the hvery stable man, came in with five hundred 
dollars and asked him to see if the Cuban Board of 
Directors would let him put it in, Jeff laid it in 
the drawer and then shaved him for five cents, 
in the same old way. Of course, he must have 
felt proud when, a few days later, he got a letter 
from the Cuban people, from New York, accepting 
the money straight off without a single question, 
and without knowing anything more of Johnson 
except that he was a friend of Jeff's. They wrote 
most handsomely. Any friends of Jeff's were 
friends of Cuba. All money they might send 
would be treated just as Jeff's would be treated. 

One reason, perhaps, why Jeff didn't give up 
shaving was because it allowed him to talk about 
Cuba. You see everybody knew in Mariposa that 
Jeff Thorpe had sold out of Cobalts and had gone 
into Cuban Renovated Lands — and that spread 
round him a kind of halo of wealth and mystery 
and outlandishness — oh, something Spanish. 
Perhaps you've felt it about people that you know\ 
Anyhow, they asked him about the climate, and 
yellow fever and what the negroes were like and 
all that sort of thing. 

" This Cubey, it appears, is an island," Jeff 

55 



Sunshine Sketches 



would explain. Of course, everybody knows how 
easily islands lend themselves to making money, — 
" and for fruit, they say it comes up so fast you 
can't stop it." And then he would pass into 
details about the Hash-enders and the resurrectos 
and technical things like that till it was thought 
a wonder how he could know it. Still, it was 
reahzed that a man with money has got to know 
these things. Look at Morgan and Rockefeller 
and all the men that make a pile. They know 
just as much as Jeff did about the countries 
where they make it. It stands to reason. 

Did I say that Jeff shaved in the same old 
way ? Not quite. There was something even 
dreamier about it now, and a sort of new element 
in the way Jeff fell out of his monotone into lapses 
of thought that I, for one, misunderstood. I 
thought that perhaps getting so much money, — 
well, you know the way it acts on people in the 
larger cities. It seemed to spoil one's idea of 
Jeff that copper and asbestos and banana lands 
should form the goal of his thought when, if he 
knew it, the little shop and the sunlight of 
Mariposa was so much better. 

In fact, I had perhaps borne him a grudge for 
what seemed to me his perpetual interest in the 
great capitalists. He always had some item out 
of the paper about them. 

" I see where this here Carnegie has give fifty 

56 



Jefferson Thorpe 



thousand dollars for one of them observatories," 
he would say. 

And another day he would pause in the course 
of shaving, and almost whisper : " Did you ever 
see this Rockefeller ? " 

It w^as only by a sort of accident that I came to 
know that there was another side to Jefferson's 
speculation that no one in Mariposa ever knew, or 
will ever know now. 

I knew it because I went in to see Jeff in his 
house one night. The house, — I think I said it, — 
stood out behind the barber shop. You went out 
of the back door of the shop, and through a grass 
plot with petunias beside it and the house stood 
at the end. You could see the light of the lamp 
behind the blind, and through the screen door as 
you came along. And it was here that Jefferson 
used to sit in the evenings when the shop got 
empty. 

There was a round table that The Woman used 
to lay for supper, and after supper there used to 
be a chequered cloth on it and a lamp with a 
shade. And beside it Jeff would sit, with his 
spectacles on and the paper spread out, reading 
about Carnegie and Rockefeller. Near him, but 
away from the table, was The Woman doing 
needlework, and Myra, when she wasn't working 
in the Telephone Exchange, was there too with 
her elbows on the table reading Marie Corelli — 

57 



Sunshine Sketches 



only now, of course, after the fortune, she was 
reading the prospectuses of Dramatic Schools. 

So this night, — I don't know just what it was 
in the paper that caused it, — Jeff laid down what 
he was reading and started to talk about Carnegie. 

" This Carnegie, I bet you, would be worth," 
said Jeff, closing up his eyes in calculation, " as 
much as perhaps two million dollars, if you was 
to sell him up. And this Rockefeller and this 
Morgan, either of them, to sell them up clean, 
would be worth another couple of million " 

I may say in parenthesis that it was a favourite 
method in Mariposa if you wanted to get at the 
real worth of a man, to imagine him clean sold 
up, put up for auction, as it were. It was the 
only way to test him. 

" And now look at em," Jeff went on. " They 
make their money and what do they do with it ? 
They give it away. And who do they give it 
to ? Why, to those as don't want it, every time. 
They give it to these professors and to this 
research and that, and do the poor get any of 
it ? Not a cent and never will." 

" I tell you, boys," continued Jeff (there were 
no boys present, but in Mariposa all really impor- 
tant speeches are addressed to an imaginary 
audience of boys) — " I tell you if I was to make a 
million out of this Cubey, I'd give it straight to 
the poor, yes, sir — divide it up into a hundred lots 
3S 



Jefferson Thorpe 



of a thousand dollars each and give it to the people 
that hadn't nothing." 

So always after that I knew just what those 
bananas were being grown for. 

Indeed after that, though Jefferson never spoke 
of his intentions directly, he said a number of 
things that seemed to bear on them. He asked me, 
for instance, one day, how many blind people it 
would take to fill one of these blind homes and 
how a feller could get ahold of them. And at 
another time he asked whether if a feller adver- 
tised for some of these incurables a feller could 
get enough of them to make a showing. I know 
for a fact that he got Nivens, the lawyer, to draw 
up a document that was to give an acre of banana 
land in Cuba to every idiot in Missinaba county. 

But still, — what's the use of talking of what 
Jeff meant to do ? Nobody knows or cares about 
it now. 

The end of it was bound to come. Even in 
Mariposa some of the people must have thought 
so. Else how was it that Henry Mullins made 
such a fuss about selling a draft for forty thousand 
on New York ? And w^hy was it that Mr. Smith 
wouldn't pay Billy, the desk clerk, his back wages 
when he wanted to put it into Cuba ? 

Oh, yes ; some of them must have seen it. 
And yet when it came, it seemed so quiet, — ever 
so quiet — not a bit like the Northern Star mine 

59 



Sunshine Sketches 



and the oyster supper and the Mariposa band. 
It is strange how quiet these things look, the other 
way round. 

You remember the Cuban Land frauds in New 
York — and Porf orio Gomez shooting the detective, 
and him and Maximo Morez getting clear away 
with two hundred thousand ? No, of course 
you don't ; why, even in the city papers it only 
filled an inch or two of type and any^vay the 
names were hard to remember. That was Jeff's 
money — part of it. Mullins got the telegram, 
from a broker or someone, and he showed it to 
Jeff just as he was going up the street with an 
estate agent to look at a big empty lot on the 
hill behind the town — the very place for these 
incurables . 

And Jeff went back to the shop so quiet — 
have you ever seen an animal that is stricken 
through, how quiet it seems to move ? 

Well, that's how he walked. 

And since that, though it's quite a little while 
ago, the shop's open till eleven every night now, 
and Jeff is shaving away to pay back that five 
hundred that Johnson, the livery man, sent to the 
Cubans, and 

Pathetic ? tut ! tut ! You don't know Mari- 
posa. Jeff has to work pretty late, but that's 
nothing — nothing at all, if you've worked hard 
all your lifetime. And Myra is back at the 

60 



Jefferson Thorpe 



Telephone Exchange — they were glad enough to 
get her, and she says now that if there's one thing 
she hates, it's the stage, and she can't see how the 
actresses put up with it. 

Anyway, things are not so bad. You see it was 
just at this time that Mr. Smith's caff opened, 
and Mr. Smith came to Jeff's Woman and said 
he wanted seven dozen eggs a day, and wanted 
them handy, and so the hens are back, and more 
of them, and they exult so every morning over 
the eggs they lay that if you wanted to talk of 
Rockefeller in the barber shop you couldn't hear 
his name for the cackling. 



6i 



Chapter HI 

The Marine Excursions of the 

Knights of Pythias 

HALF- PAST six on a July morning ! The 
Mariposa Belle is at the wharf, decked 
in flags, with steam up ready to start. 

Excursion day ! 

Half-past six on a July morning, and Lake 
Wissanotti lying in the sun as calm as glass. The 
opal colours of the morning light are shot from 
the surface of the water. 

Out on the lake the last thin threads of the 
mist are clearing away like flecks of cotton wool. 

The long call of the loon echoes over the lake. 
The air is cool and fresh. There is in it all the 
new life of the land of the silent pine and the 
moving waters. Lake Wissanotti in the morning 
sunlight ! Don't talk to me of the ItaHan lakes, 
or the Tyrol or the Swiss Alps. Take them 
away. Move them somewhere else. I don't 
want them. 

Excursion Day, at half-past six of a summer 
morning ! With the boat all decked in flags and 
all the people in Mariposa on the wharf, and the 

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Sunshine Sketches 



band in peaked caps with big cornets tied to their 
bodies ready to play at any minute ! I say ! 
Don't tell me about the Carnival of Venice and 
the Delhi Durbar. Don't ! I wouldn't look at 
them. I'd shut my eyes ! For light and colour 
give me every time an excursion out of Mariposa 
down the lake to the Indian's Island out of sight 
in the morning mist. Talk of your Papal Zouaves 
and your Buckingham Palace Guard ! I want to 
see the Mariposa band in uniform and the Mari- 
posa Knights of Pythias with their aprons and 
their insignia and their picnic baskets and their 
five-cent cigars ! 

Half-past six in the morning, and all the crowd 
on the wharf and the boat due to leave in half an 
hour. Notice it ! — in half an hour. Already 
she's whistled twice (at six, and at six fifteen), 
and at any minute now, Christie Johnson will 
step into the pilot house and pull the string for 
the warning whistle that the boat will leave in 
half an hour. So keep ready. Don't think of 
running back to Smith's Hotel for the sandwiches. 
Don't be fool enough to try to go up to the Greek 
Store, next to Netley's, and buy fruit. You'll 
be left behind for sure if you do. Never mind the 
sandwiches and the fruit ! Anyway, here comes 
Mr. Smith himself with a huge basket of provender 
that would feed a factory. There must be sand- 
wiches in that. I think I can hear them clinking. 

64 



The Knights of Pythias 

And behind Mr. Smith is the German waiter from 
the caff with another basket — indubitably lager 
beer ; and behind him, the bar-tender of the hotel, 
carrying nothing, as far as one can see. But of 
course if you know Mariposa you will understand 
that why he looks so nonchalant and empty- 
handed is because he has two bottles of rye 
whiskey under his linen duster. You know, I 
think, the peculiar walk of a man with two 
bottles of whiskey in the inside pockets of a linen 
coat. In Mariposa, you see, to bring beer to an 
excursion is quite in keeping with public opinion. 
But, whiskey, — well, one has to be a little 
careful. 

Do I say that Mr. Smith is here ? Why, every- 
body's here. There's Hussell the editor of the 
Newspacket, wearing a blue ribbon on his coat, 
for the Mariposa Knights of Pythias are, by their 
constitution, dedicated to temperance ; and 
there's Henry Mullins, the manager of the 
Exchange Bank, also a Knight of Pythias, with a 
small flask of Pogram's Special in his hip pocket 
as a sort of amendment to the constitution. And 
there's Dean Drone, the Chaplain of the Order, 
with a fishing-rod (you never saw such green bass 
as lie among the rocks at Indian's Island), and 
with a trolling line in case of maskinonge, and a 
landing net in case of pickerel, and with his 
eldest daughter, Lilian Drone, in case of young 

65 F 



Sunshine Sketches 



men. There never was such a fisherman as the 
Rev. Rupert Drone. 

Perhaps I ought to explain that when I speak 
of the excursion as being of the Knights of 
Pythias, the thing must not be understood in any 
narrow sense. In Mariposa practically everybody 
belongs to the Knights of Pythias just as they 
do to everything else. That's the great thing about 
the town and that's what makes it so different 
from the city. Everybody is in everything. 

You should see them on the seventeenth of 
March, for example, when everybody wears a 
green ribbon and they're all laughing and glad, — 
you know what the Celtic nature is, — and talking 
about Home Rule. 

On St. Andrew's Day every man in town wears 
a thistle and shakes hands with everybody else 
and you see the fine old Scotch honesty beaming 
out of their eyes. 

And on St. George's Day ! — well, there's no 
heartiness like the good old English spirit after 
all ; why shouldn't a man feel glad that he's an 
Englishman ? 

Then on the Fourth of July there are stars and 
stripes flying over half the stores in town, and 
suddenly all the men are seen to smoke cigars, 
and to know all about Roosevelt and Bryan and 
the Philippine Islands. Then you learn for the 

66 



The Knights of Pythias 

first time that Jeff Thorpe's people came from 
Massachusetts and that his uncle fought at 
Bunker Hill (it must have been Bunker Hill, — 
anyway Jefferson will swear it was in Dakota all 
right enough) ; and you find that George Duff 
has a married sister in Rochester and that her 
husband is all right ; in fact, George was down 
there as recently as eight years ago. Oh, it's the 
most American town imaginable is Mariposa, — on 
the fourth of July. 

But wait, just wait, if you feel anxious about 
the sohdity of the British connection, till the 
twelfth of the month, when everybody is wearing 
an orange streamer in his coat and the Orangemen 
(every man in town) walk in the big procession. 
Allegiance ! Well, perhaps you remember the 
address they gave to the Prince of Wales on the 
platform of the Mariposa station as he went 
through on his tour to the west. I think that 
pretty well settled that question. 

So you will easily understand that of course every- 
body belongs to the Knights of Pythias and the 
Masons and Oddfellows, just as they all belong to 
the Snow Shoe Club and the Girls' Friendly Society . 
And meanwhile the whistle of the steamer has 
blown again for a quarter to seven : — loud and 
long this time, for any one not here now is late 
for certain, unless he should happen to come down 
in the last fifteen minutes. 

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Sunshine Sketches 



What a crowd upon the wharf and how they 
pile on to the steamer ! It's a wonder that the 
boat can hold them all. But that's just the 
marvellous thing about the Mariposa Belle. 

I don't know, — I have never known, — where the 
steamers like the Mariposa Belle come from. 
Whether they are built by Harland and Wolff of 
Belfast or whether, on the other hand, they are 
not built by Harland and Wolff of Belfast, is 
more than one would like to say offhand. 

The Mariposa Belle always seems to me to have 
some of those strange properties that distinguish 
Mariposa itself. I mean, her size seems to vary 
so. If you see her there in the winter, frozen in 
the ice beside the wharf with a snowdrift against 
the windows of the pilot house, she looks a 
pathetic little thing the size of a butternut. But 
in the summer time, especially after you've been in 
Mariposa for a month or two, and have paddled 
alongside of her in a canoe, she gets larger and 
taller, and with a great sweep of black sides, till 
you see no difference between the Mariposa Belle 
and the Lusitania. Each one is a big steamer 
and that's all you can say. 

Nor do her measurements help you much. 
She draws about eighteen inches forward and more 
than that, — at least half an inch more, astern, and 
when she's loaded down with an excursion crowd, 
she draws a good two inches more. And above 
68 



The Knights of Pythias 

the water, — why, look at all the decks on her ! 
There's the deck you walk on to, from the wharf, 
all shut in, with windows along it, and the after 
cabin with the long table, and above that the deck 
with all the chairs piled upon it, and the deck in 
front where the band stand round in a circle, and 
the pilot house is higher than that, and above 
the pilot house is the board with the gold name 
and the flag pole and the steel ropes and the flags ; 
and fixed in somewhere on the different levels, is 
the lunch counter where they sell the sandwiches, 
and the engine room, and down below the deck 
level, beneath the water line, is the place where the 
crew sleep. What with steps and stairs and pas- 
sages and piles of cordwood for the engine, — oh 
no, I guess Harland and Wolff didn't build her. 
They couldn't have. 

Yet even with a huge boat like the Mariposa 
Belle, it would be impossible for her to carry all 
of the crowd that you see in the boat and on the 
wharf. In reality, the crowd is made up of two 
classes, — all of the people in Mariposa who are 
going on the excursion and all those who are not. 
Some come for the one reason and some for the 
other. 

The two tellers of the Exchange Bank are both 

there standing side by side. But one of them, — 

the one with the cameo pin and the long face like 

a horse, — is going, and the other, — with the other 

69 



Sunshine Sketches 



cameo pin and the face like another horse, — is 
not. In the same way, Hussell of the Newspacket 
is going, but his brother, beside him, isn't. LiHan 
Drone is going, but her sister can't ; and so on 
all through the crowd. 

And to think that things should look like that 
on the morning of a steamboat accident. 

How strange life is ! 

To think of all these people so eager and anxious 
to catch the steamer, and some of them running 
to catch it, and so fearful that they might miss 
it, — the morning of a steamboat accident. And 
the captain blowing his whistle, and warning 
them so severely that he would leave them behind, 
— leave them out of the accident ! And every- 
body crowding so eagerly to be in the accident. 

Perhaps life is Hke that all through. 

Strangest of all to think, in a case like this, of 
the people who were left behind, or in some way 
or other prevented from going, and always after- 
wards told of how they had escaped being on board 
the Mariposa Belle that day ! 

Some of the instances were certainly extra- 
ordinary. 

Nivens, the lawyer, escaped from being there 
merely by the fact that he was away in the city. 

Towers, the tailor, only escaped owing to the 
fact that, not intending to go on the excursion he 
70 



The Knights of Pythias 

had stayed in bed till eight o'clock and so had 
not gone. He narrated afterwards that waking 
up that morning at half-past five, he had thought 
of the excursion and for some unaccountable 
reason had felt glad that he was not going. 

The case of Yodel, the auctioneer, was even more' 
inscrutable. He had been to the Oddfellows 
excursion on the train the week before and to 
the Conservative picnic the week before that, 
and had decided not to go on this trip. In 
fact, he had not the least intention of going. 
He narrated afterwards how the night before 
someone had stopped him on the corner of 
Nippewa and Tecumseh Streets (he indicated 
the very spot) and asked : " Are you going to 
take in the excursion to-morrow ? " and he had 
said, just as simply as he was talking when 
narrating it : "No." And ten minutes after that, 
at the corner of Dalhousie and Brock Streets 
(he offered to lead a party of verification to the 
precise place) somebody else had stopped him 
and asked : " Well, are you going on the steamer 
trip to-morrow ? " Again he had answered : " No," 
apparently almost in the same tone as before. 

He said afterwards that when he heard the 
rumour of the accident it seemed like the finger 
of Providence, and he fell on his knees in thank- 
fulness. 

71 



Sunshine Sketches 



There was the similar case of Morison (I mean 
the one in Glover's hardware store that married 
one of the Thompsons). He said afterwards 
that he had read so much in the papers about 
accidents lately, — mining accidents, and aero- 
planes and gasoline, — that he had grown nervous. 
The night before his wife had asked him at supper : 
" Are you going on the excursion ? " He had 
answered: " No, I don't think I feel like it," and 
had added : " Perhaps your mother might like 
to go ? " And the next evening just at dusk 
when the news ran through the town, he said the 
first thought that flashed through his head was : 
" Mrs. Thompson's on that boat." 

He told this right as I say it — without the least 
doubt or confusion. He never for a moment 
imagined she was on the Lusitania or the Olympic 
or any other boat. He knew she was on this 
one. He said you could have knocked him down 
where he stood. But no one had. Not ever 
when he got half-way down, — on his knees, and 
it would have been easier still to knock him down 
or kick him. People do miss a lot of chances. 

Still, as I say, neither Yodel nor Morison nor 
anyone thought about there being an accident 
until just after sundown when they 

Well, have you ever heard the long booming 
whistle of a steamboat two miles out on the lake 
in the dusk, and while you listen and count and 

72 



The Knights of Pythias 

wonder, seen the crimson rockets going up against 
the sky and then heard the fire bell ringing right 
there beside you in the town, and seen the people 
running to the town wharf ? 

That's what the people of Mariposa saw and 
felt that summer evening as they watched the 
Mackinaw life-boat go plunging out into the lake 
with seven sweeps to a side and the foam clear 
to the gunwale with the lifting stroke of fourteen 
men ! 

But, dear me, I am afraid that this is no way 
to tell a story. I suppose the true art would have 
been to have said nothing about the accident 
till it happened. But when you write about 
Mariposa, or hear of it, if you know the place, 
it's all so vivid and real that a thing like the 
contrast between the excursion crowd in the 
morning and the scene at night leaps into your 
mind and you must think of it. 

But never mind about the accident, — let us 
turn back again to the morning. 

The boat was due to leave at seven. There 
was no doubt about the hour, — not only seven, 
but seven sharp. The notice in the Newspacket 
said: " The boat will leave sharp at seven ; " and 
the advertising posters on the telegraph poles on 
Missinaba Street that began " Ho, for Indian's 
Island ! " ended up with the words : " Boat leaves 

7 



Sunshine Sketches 



at seven sharp." There was a big notice on the 
wharf that said : " Boat leaves sharp on time." 

So at seven, right on the hour, the whistle blew 
loud and long, and then at seven fifteen three 
short peremptory blasts and at seven thirty one 
quick angry call, — just one, — and very soon after 
that they cast off the last of the ropes and the 
Mariposa Belle sailed off in her cloud of flags, and 
the band of the Knights of Pythias, timing it to 
a nicety, broke into the " Maple Leaf for Ever ! " 

I suppose that all excursions when they start 
are much the same. Anyway, on the Mariposa 
Belle everybody went running up and down all 
over the boat with deck chairs and camp stools 
and baskets, and found places, splendid places 
to sit, and then got scared that there might be 
better ones and chased off again. People hunted 
for places out of the sun and when they got them 
swore that they weren't going to freeze to please 
anybody ; and the people in the sun said that 
they hadn't paid fifty cents to be roasted. Others 
said that they hadn't paid fifty cents to get covered 
with cinders, and there were still others who hadn't 
paid fifty cents to get shaken to death with the 
propeller. 

Still, it was all right presently. The people 
seemed to get sorted out into the places on 
the boat where they belonged. The women, the 
older ones, all gravitated into the cabin on the 

74 



The Knights of Pythias 

lower deck and by getting round the table with 
needlework, and with all the windows shut, they 
soon had it, as they said themselves, just like 
being at home. 

All the young boys and the toughs and the men 
in the band got down on the lower deck forward, 
where the boat was dirtiest and where the anchor 
was and the coils of rope. 

And upstairs on the after deck there were 
Lilian Drone and Miss Lawson, the high school 
teacher, with a book of German poetry, — Gothey 
I think it was, — and the bank teller and the 
younger men. 

In the centre, standing beside the rail, were 
Dean Drone and Dr. Gallagher, looking through 
binocular glasses at the shore. 

Up in front on the little deck forward of the 
pilot house was a group of the older men, Mullins 
and Duff and Mr. Smith in a deck chair, and beside 
him Mr. Golgotha Gingham, the undertaker of 
Mariposa, on a stool. It was part of Mr. Gingham's 
principles to take in an outing of this sort, a 
business matter, more or less, — for you never 
know what may happen at these water parties. 
At any rate, he was there in a neat suit of black, 
not, of course, his heavier or professional suit, but 
a soft clinging effect as of burnt paper that com- 
bined gaiety and decorum to a nicety. 



75 



Sunshine Sketches 



*' Yes," said Mr. Gingham, waving his black 
glove in a general way towards the shore, " I know 
the lake well, very well. I've been pretty much 
all over it in my time." 

*' Canoeing ? " asked somebody. 

'* No," said Mr. Gingham, " not in a canoe." 
There seemed a peculiar and quiet meaning in his 
tone. 

" Sailing, I suppose," said somebody else. 

*' No," said Mr. Gingham. " I don't under- 
stand it." 

'* I never knowed that you went on to the 
water at all, Gol," said Mr. Smith, breaking in. 

"Ah, not now," explained Mr. Gingham; "it 
was years ago, the first summer I came to Mari- 
posa. I was on the water practically all day. 
Nothing like it to give a man an appetite and 
keep him in shape." 

" Was you camping ? " asked Mr. Smith. 

" We camped at night," assented the under- 
taker, " but we put in practically the whole day 
on the water. You see we were after a party 
that had come up here from the city on his vaca- 
tion and gone out in a sailing canoe. We were 
dragging. We were up every morning at sunrise, 
lit a fire on the beach and cooked breakfast, and 
then we'd light our pipes and be off with the net 
for a whole day. It's a great life," concluded 
Mr. Gingham wistfully. 

76 



The Knights of Pythias 

" Did you get him ? " asked two or three 
together. 

There was a pause before Mr. Gingham 
answered. 

" We did," he said, — " down in the reeds past 
Horseshoe Point. But it was no use. He turned 
blue on me right away." 

After which Mr. Gingham fell into such a deep 
reverie that the boat had steamed another half- 
mile down the lake before anybody broke the 
silence again. 

Talk of this sort, — and after all what more 
suitable for a day on the water ? — beguiled the 
way. 

Down the lake, mile by mile over the calm 
water, steamed the Mariposa Belle. They passed 
Poplar Point where the high sand banks are 
with all the swallows' nests in them, and Dean 
Drone and Dr. Gallagher looked at them 
alternately through the binocular glasses, and it 
was wonderful how plainly one could see the 
swallows and the banks and the shrubs, — just 
as plainly as with the naked eye. 

And a little further down they passed the 
Shingle Beach, and Dr. Gallagher, who knew 
Canadian history, said to Dean Drone that it was 
strange to think that Champlain had landed there 
with his French explorers three hundred years 

77 



Sunshine Sketches 



ago ; and Dean Drone, who didn't know Canadian 
history, said it was stranger still to think that the 
hand of the Almighty had piled up the hills and 
rocks long before that ; and Dr. Gallagher said 
it was wonderful how the French had found their 
way through such a pathless wilderness ; and 
Dean Drone said that it was wonderful also to 
think that the Almighty had placed even the 
smallest shrub in its appointed place. Dr. 
Gallagher said it filled him with admiration. 
Dean Drone said it filled him with awe. Dr. 
Gallagher said he'd been full of it ever since he 
was a boy ; and Dean Drone said so had he. 

Then a little further, as the Mariposa Belle 
steamed on down the lake, they passed the Old 
Indian Portage where the great grey rocks are ; 
and Dr. Gallagher drew Dean Drone's attention 
to the place where the narrow canoe track wound 
up from the shore to the woods, and Dean Drone 
said he could see it perfectly well without the 
glasses. 

Dr. Gallagher said that it was just here that a 
party of five hundred French had made their 
way with all their baggage and accoutrements 
across the rocks of the divide and down to the 
Great Bay. And Dean Drone said that it re- 
minded him of Xenophon leading his ten thousand 
Greeks over the hill passes of Armenia down to 
the sea. Dr. Gallagher said that he had often 

78 



The Knights of Pythias 

wished he could have seen and spoken to Cham- 
plain, and Dean Drone said how much he regretted 
to have never known Xenophon. 

And then after that they fell to talking of relics 
and traces of the past and Dr. Gallagher said that 
if Dean Drone would come round to his house 
some night he would show him some Indian 
arrow heads that he had dug up in his garden. 
And Dean Drone said that if Dr. Gallagher would 
come round to the rectory any afternoon he would 
show him a map of Xerxes' invasion of Greece. 
Only he must come some time between the Infant 
Class and the Mothers' Auxiliary. 

So presently they both knew that they were 
blocked out of one another's houses for some time 
to come, and Dr. Gallagher walked forward and 
told Mr. Smith, who had never studied Greek, 
about Champlain crossing the rock divide. 

Mr. Smith turned his head and looked at the 
divide for half a second and then said he had 
crossed a worse one up north back of the Wah- 
nipitae and that the flies were Hades, — and then 
went on playing freezeout poker with the two 
juniors in Duff's bank. 

So Dr. Gallagher realized that that's always the 
way when you try to tell people things, and that 
as far as gratitude and appreciation goes one 
might as well never read books or travel anywhere 
or do anything. 

79 



Sunshine Sketches 



In fact, it was at this very moment that he 
made up his mind to give the arrows to the Mari- 
posa Mechanics' Institute, — they afterwards be- 
came, as you know, the Gallagher Collection. 
But for the time being, the doctor was sick of them 
and wandered off round the boat and watched 
Henry Mullins showing George Duff how to make 
a John Collins without lemons, and finally went 
and sat down among the Mariposa band and 
wished that he hadn't come. 

So the boat steamed on and the sun rose higher 
and higher, and the freshness of the morning 
changed into the full glare of noon, and they 
went on to where the lake began to narrow in at 
its foot, just where the Indian's Island is, — all 
grass and trees and with a log wharf running 
into the water. Below it the Lower Ossawippi 
runs out of the lake, and quite near are the rapids, 
and you can see down among the trees the red 
brick of the power house and hear the roar of the 
leaping water. 

The Indian's Island itself is all covered with 
trees and tangled vines, and the water about it 
is so still that it's all reflected double and looks 
the same either way up. Then when the steamer's 
whistle blows as it comes into the wharf, you hear 
it echo among the trees of the island, and rever- 
berate back from the shores of the lake. 

The scene is all so quiet and still and unbroken, 
80 



The Knights of Pythias 

that Miss Cleghorn, — the sallow girl in the tele- 
phone exchange, that I spoke of — said she'd like 
to be buried there. But all the people were so 
busy getting their baskets and gathering up their 
things that no one had time to attend to it. 

I mustn't even try to describe the landing and 
the boat crunching against the wooden wharf and 
all the people running to the same side of the deck 
and Christie Johnson calling out to the crowd to 
keep to the starboard and nobody being able to 
find it. Everyone who has been on a Mariposa 
excursion knows all about that. 

Nor can I describe the day itself and the picnic 
under the trees. There were speeches afterwards, 
and Judge Pepperleigh gave such offence by 
bringing in Conservative politics that a man called 
Patriotus Canadiensis wrote and asked for some 
of the invaluable space of the Mariposa Times- 
Herald and exposed it. 

I should say that there were races too, on the 
grass on the open side of the island, graded mostly 
according to ages, — races for boys under thirteen 
and girls over nineteen and all that sort of thing. 
Sports are generally conducted on that plan in 
Mariposa. It is realized that a woman of sixty 
has an unfair advantage over a mere child. 

Dean Drone managed the races and decided 
the ages and gave out the prizes ; the Wesleyan 
minister helped, and he and the young student, 

8i G 



Sunshine Sketches 



who was relieving in the Presbyterian Church, 
held the string at the winning point. 

They had to get mostly clergymen for the 
races because all the men had wandered off, 
somehow, to where they were drinking lager beer 
out of two kegs stuck on pine logs among the 
trees. 

But if you've ever been on a Mariposa excur- 
sion you know all about these details anyway. 

So the day wore on and presently the sun 
came through the trees on a slant and the steamer 
whistle blew with a great puff of white steam and 
all the people came straggling down to the wharf 
and pretty soon the Mariposa Belle had floated 
out on to the lake again and headed for the town, 
twenty miles away. 

I suppose you have often noticed the con- 
trast there is between an excursion on its way 
out in the morning and what it looks like on the 
way home. 

In the morning everybody is so restless and 
animated and moves to and fro all over the boat 
and asks questions. But coming home, as the 
afternoon gets later and later and the sun sinks 
beyond the hills, all the people seem to get so still 
and quiet and drowsy. 

So it was with the people on the Mariposa Belle. 
They sat there on the benches and the deck chairs 

82 



The Knights of Pythias 

in little clusters, and listened to the regular beat 
of the propeller and almost dozed off asleep as 
they sat. Then when the sun set and the dusk 
drew on, it grew almost dark on the deck and so 
still that you could hardly tell there was anyone 
on board. 

And if you had looked at the steamer from the 
shore or from one of the islands, you'd have seen 
the row of lights from the cabin windows shining 
on the water and the red glare of the burning 
hemlock from the funnel, and you'd have heard 
the soft thud of the propeller miles away over the 
lake. 

Now and then, too, you could have heard them 
singing on the steamer, — the voices of the girls 
and the men blended into unison by the distance, 
rising and falling in long-drawn melody : " — 
Can-a-da — — Can-a-da. 

You may talk as you will about the intoning 
choirs of your European cathedrals, but the sound 
of " O Can-a-da," borne across the waters of a 
silent lake at evening is good enough for those of 
us who know Mariposa. 

I think that it was just as they were singing 
like this : " — Can-a-da," that word went round 
that the boat w^as sinking. 

If you have ever been in any sudden emergency 
on the water, you will understand the strange 
psychology of it, — the way in which what is 

83 



Sunshine Sketches 



happening seems to become known all in a moment 
without a word being said. The news is trans- 
mitted from one to the other by some mysterious 
process. 

At any rate, on the Mariposa Belle first one 
and then the other heard that the steamer was 
sinking. As far as I could ever learn the first of 
it was that George Duff, the bank manager, came 
very quietly to Dr. Gallagher and asked him if 
he thought that the boat was sinking. The 
doctor said no, that he had thought so earlier in 
the day but that he didn't now think that she was. 

After that Duff, according to his own account, 
had said to Macartney, the lawyer, that the boat 
was sinking, and Macartney said that he doubted 
it very much. 

Then somebody came to Judge Pepperleigh and 
woke him up and said that there was six inches of 
water in the steamer and that she was sinking. 
And Pepperleigh said it was perfect scandal and 
passed the news on to his wife and she said that 
they had no business to allow it and that if the 
steamer sank that was the last excursion she'd 
go on. 

So the news went all round the boat and every- 
where the people gathered in groups and talked 
about it in the angry and excited way that people 
have when a steamer is sinking on one of the 
lakes like Lake Wissanotti. 

84 



The Knights of Pythias 

Dean Drone, of course, and some others were 
quieter about it, and said that one must make 
allowances and that naturally there were two sides 
to everything. But most of them wouldn't listen 
to reason at all. I think, perhaps, that some of 
them were frightened. You see the last time but 
one that the steamer had sunk, there had been a 
man drowned and it made them nervous. 

What ? Hadn't I explained about the depth 
of Lake Wissanotti ? I had taken it for granted 
that you knew ; and in any case parts of it are 
deep enough, though I don't suppose in this 
stretch of it from the big reed beds up to within a 
mile of the town wharf, you could find six feet 
of water in it if you tried. Oh, pshaw ! I was 
not talking about a steamer sinking in the ocean 
and carrying down its screaming crowds of people 
into the hideous depths of green water. Oh, 
dear me, no ! That kind of thing never happens 
on Lake Wissanotti. 

But what does happen is that the Mariposa 
Belle sinks every now and then, and sticks there 
on the bottom till they get things straightened 
up. 

On the lakes round Mariposa, if a person arrives 
late anywhere and explains that the steamer sank, 
everybody understands the situation. 

You see when Harland and Wolff built the 
Mariposa Belle, they left some cracks in between 

85 



Sunshine Shetches 



the timbers that you fill up with cotton waste 
every Sunday. If this is not attended to, the 
boat sinks. In fact, it is part of the law of the 
province that all the steamers like the Mariposa 
Belle must be properly corked, — I think that is 
the word, — every season. There are inspectors 
who visit all the hotels in the province to see that 
it is done. 

So you can imagine now that I've explained it 
a little straighter, the indignation of the people 
when they knew that the boat had come un- 
corked and that they might be stuck out there on 
a shoal or a mud-bank half the night. 

I don't say either that there wasn't any danger ; 
anyway, it doesn't feel very safe when you realise 
that the boat is settling down with every hundred 
yards that she goes, and you look over the side 
and see only the black water in the gathering 
night. 

Safe ! I'm not sure now that I come to think 
of it that it isn't worse than sinking in the 
Atlantic. After all, in the Atlantic there is wireless 
telegraphy, and a lot of trained sailors and 
stewards. But out on Lake Wissanotti, — far out, 
so that you can only just see the lights of the town 
away off to the south, — when the propeller comes 
to a stop, — and you can hear the hiss of steam as 
they start to rake out the engine fires to prevent an 
explosion, — and when you turn from the red glare 

86 



The Knights of Pythias 

that comes from the furnace doors as they open 
them, to the black dark that is gathering over the 
lake, — and there's a night wind beginning to run 
among the rushes, — and you see the men going 
forward to the roof of the pilot house to send up 
the rockets to rouse the town, — safe ? Safe your- 
self, if you like ; as for me, let me once get back 
into Mariposa again, under the night shadow of 
the maple trees, and this shall be the last, last 
time 111 go on Lake Wissanotti. 

Safe ! Oh, yes ! Isn't it strange how safe 
other people's adventures seem after they happen. 
But you'd have been scared, too, if you'd been 
there just before the steamer sank, and seen them 
bringing up all the women on to the top deck. 

I don't see how some of the people took it so 
calmly ; how Mr. Smith, for instance, could have 
gone on smoking and telling how he'd had a 
steamer " sink on him " on Lake Nipissing and a 
still bigger one, a side-wheeler, sink on him in 
Lake Abbitibbi. 

Then, quite suddenly, with a quiver, down she 
went. You could feel the boat sink, sink, — down, 
down, — would it never get to the bottom ? The 
water came flush up to the lower deck, and then 
— thank heaven, — the sinking stopped and there 
was the Mariposa Belle safe and tight on a reed 
bank. 

Really, it made one positively laugh ! It 

87 



Sunshine Sketches 



seemed so queer and, anyway, if a man has a sort 
of natural courage, danger makes him laugh. 
Danger ? pshaw ! fiddlesticks ! everybody scouted 
the idea. Why, it is just the little things like 
this that give zest to a day on the water. 

Within half a minute they were all running 
round looking for sandwiches and cracking jokes 
and talking of making coffee over the remains 
of the engine fires. 

I don't need to tell at length how it all happened 
after that. 

I suppose the people on the Mariposa Belle 
would have had to settle down there all night 
or till help came from the town, but some 
of the men who had gone forward and were 
peering out into the dark said that it couldn't be 
more than a mile across the water to Miller's 
Point. You could almost see it over there to the 
left, — some of them, I think, said " off on the port 
bow," because you know when you get mixed up 
in these marine disasters, you soon catch the 
atmosphere of the thing. 

So pretty soon they had the davits swung out 
over the side and were lowering the old lifeboat 
from the top deck into the water. 

There were men leaning out over the rail of 
the Mariposa Belle with lanterns that threw the 
light as they let her down, and the glare fell on 



The Knights of Pythias 

the water and the reeds. But when they got the 
boat lowered, it looked such a frail, clumsy thing 
as one saw it from the rail above, that the cry 
was raised : " Women and children first ! " For 
what was the sense, if it should turn out that the 
boat wouldn't even hold women and children, of 
trying to jam a lot of heavy men into it ? 

So they put in mostly women and children and 
the boat pushed out into the darkness so freighted 
down it would hardly float. 

In the bow of it was the Presbyterian student 
who was relieving the minister, and he called out 
that they were in the hands of Providence. But 
he was crouched and ready to spring out of them 
at the first moment. 

So the boat went and was lost in the darkness 
except for the lantern in the bow that you could 
see bobbing on the water. Then presently it 
came back and they sent another load, till pretty 
soon the decks began to thin out and everybody 
got impatient to be gone. 

It was about the time that the third boat-load 
put off that Mr. Smith took a bet with Mullins 
for twenty-five dollars, that he'd be home in 
Mariposa before the people in the boats had walked 
round the shore. 

No one knew just what he meant, but pretty 
soon they saw Mr. Smith disappear down below 
into the lowest part of the steamer with a mallet 

89 



Sunshine Sketches 



in one hand and a big bundle of marline in the 
other. 

They might have wondered more about it, but 
it was just at this time that they heard the shouts 
from the rescue boat — the big Mackinaw lifeboat 
— that had put out from the town with fourteen 
men at the sweeps when they saw the first rockets 
go up. 

I suppose there is always something inspiring 
about a rescue at sea, or on the water. 

After all, the bravery of the lifeboat man is 
the true bravery, — expended to save life, not to 
destroy it. 

Certainly they told for months after of how the 
rescue boat came out to the Mariposa Belle. 

I suppose that when they put her in the water 
the lifeboat touched it for the first time since the 
old Macdonald Government placed her on Lake 
Wissanotti. 

Anyway, the water poured in at every seam. 
But not for a moment, — even with two miles of 
water between them and the steamer, — did the 
rowers pause for that. 

By the time they were half-way there the 
water was almost up to the thwarts, but they 
drove her on. Panting and exhausted (for mind 
you, if you haven't been in a fool boat like that 
for years, rowing takes it out of you), the rowers 
stuck to their task. They threw the ballast over 
go 



The Knights of Pythias 

and chucked into the water the heavy cork 
jackets and hfebelts that encumbered their 
movements. There was no thought of turning 
back. They were nearer to the steamer than the 
shore. 

" Hang to it, boys," called the crowd from the 
steamer's deck, and hang they did. 

They were almost exhausted when they got 
them ; men leaning from the steamer threw them 
ropes and one by one every man was hauled 
aboard just as the lifeboat sank under their feet. 

Saved ! by Heaven, saved, by one of the 
smartest pieces of rescue work ever seen on the 
lake. 

There's no use describing it ; you need to see 
rescue work of this kind by lifeboats to under- 
stand it. 

Nor were the lifeboat crew the only ones that 
distinguished themselves. 

Boat after boat and canoe after canoe had put 
out from Mariposa to the help of the steamer. 
They got them all. 

Pupkin, the other bank teller, with a face like 
a horse, who hadn't gone on the excursion, — as 
soon as he knew that the boat was signalling for 
help and that Miss Lawson was sending up rockets, 
— rushed for a row boat, grabbed an oar (two 
would have hampered him), and paddled madly 
out into the lake. He struck right out into the 

91 



Svnshine Sketches 



dark with the crazy skiff almost sinking beneath 
his feet. But they got him. They rescued him. 
They watched him, almost dead with exhaustion, 
make his way to the steamer, where he was 
hauled up with ropes. Saved ! Saved ! ! 

They might have gone on that way half the 
night, picking up the rescuers, only, at the 
very moment when the tenth load of people left 
for the shore, — just as suddenly and saucily as 
you please, up came the Mariposa Belle from the 
mud bottom and floated. 

Floated ? 

Why, of course she did. If you take a hundred 
and fifty people off a steamer that has sunk, and 
if you get a man as shrewd as Mr. Smith to plug 
the timber seams with mallet and marline, and 
if you turn ten bandsmen of the Mariposa band 
on to your hand pump on the bow of the lower 
decks — float ? why, what else can she do ? 

Then, if you stuff in hemlock into the embers 
of the fire that you were raking out, till it hums 
and crackles under the boiler, it won't be long 
before you hear the propeller thud — thudding at 
the stern again, and before the long roar of the 
steam whistle echoes over to the town. 

And so the Mariposa Belle, with all steam up 
again and with the long train of sparks careering 
from the funnel, is heading for the town. 
92 



The Knights of Pythias 

But no Christie Johnson at the wheel in the 
pilot house this time. 

" Smith ! Get Smith ! '' is the cry. 

Can he take her in ? Well, now ! Ask a man 
who has had steamers sink on him in half the 
lakes from Temiscaming to the Bay, if he can 
take her in ? Ask a man who has run a York 
boat down the rapids of the Moose when the ice 
is moving, if he can grip the steering wheel of 
the Mariposa Belle. So there she steams safe 
and sound to the town wharf ! 

Look at the lights and the crowd ! If only the 
federal census taker could count us now ! Hear 
them calling and shouting back and forward 
from the deck to the shore ! Listen ! There is 
the rattle of the shore ropes as they get them 
ready, and there's the Mariposa band, — actually 
forming in a circle on the upper deck just as she 
docks, and the leader with his baton, — one — two 
— ready now, — 

" O CAN-A-DA ! " 



93 



Chapter IV 

The Ministrations of the Bev. 

Mr, Drone 

THE Church of England Church in Mariposa 
is on a side street, where the maple 
trees are thickest, a little up the hill from 
the heart of the town. The trees above the church 
and the grass plot that was once the cemetery, till 
they made the new one (the Necropolis, over the 
brow of the hill) , fill out the whole corner. Down 
behind the church, with only the driving shed and 
a lane between, is the rectory. It is a little brick 
house with odd angles. There is a hedge and a 
little gate, and a weeping ash tree with red berries. 
At the side of the rectory, churchward, is a 
little grass lawn with low hedges and at the side 
of that two wild plum trees, that are practically 
always in white blossom. Underneath them is a 
rustic table and chairs, and it is here that you may 
see Rural Dean Drone, the incumbent of the 
Church of England Church, sitting, in the chequered 
light of the plum trees that is neither sun nor 
shadow. Generally you will find him reading, 
and when I tell you that at the end of the grass 

95 



Sunshine Sketches 



plot where the hedge is highest there is a yellow 
bee hive with seven bees that belong to Dean 
Drone, you will realize that it is only fitting that 
the Dean is reading in the Greek. For what 
better could a man be reading beneath the blossom 
of the plum trees, within the very sound of the 
bees, than the Pastorals of Theocritus ? The light 
trash of modern romance might put a man to 
sleep in such a spot, but with such food for 
reflection as Theocritus, a man may safely close 
his eyes and muse on what he reads without 
fear of dropping into slumber. 

Some men, I suppose, terminate their educa- 
tion when they leave their college. Not so Dean 
Drone. I have often heard him say that if he 
couldn't take a book in the Greek out on the lawn 
in a spare half -hour, he would feel lost. It's a 
certain activity of the brain that must be stilled 
somehow. The Dean, too, seemed to have a 
native feeling for the Greek language. I have 
often heard people who might sit with him on 
the lawn, ask him to translate some of it. But 
he always refused. One couldn't translate it, he 
said. It lost so much in the translation that it 
was better not to try. It was far wiser not to 
attempt it. If you undertook to translate it, there 
was something gone, something missing immedi- 
ately. I believe that many classical scholars 
feel this way, and like to read the Greek just as it 
96 



The Bev. Mr. Drone 



is, without the hazard of trying to put it into 
so poor a medium as Enghsh. So that when 
Dean Drone said that he simply couldn't translate 
it, I believe he was perfectly sincere. 

Sometimes, indeed, he would read it aloud. 
That was another matter. Whenever, for ex- 
ample, Dr. Gallagher — I mean, of course, old Dr. 
Gallagher, not the young doctor (who was always 
out in the country in the afternoon) — would come 
over and bring his latest Indian relics to show to 
the Dean, the latter always read to him a passage 
or two. As soon as the doctor laid his tomahawk 
on the table, the Dean would reach for his Theo- 
critus. I remember that on the day when Dr. 
Gallagher brought over the Indian skull that they 
had dug out of the railway embankment, and 
placed it on the rustic table, the Dean read to him 
so long from Theocritus that the doctor, I truly 
believe, dozed off in his chair. The Dean had 
to wait and fold his hands with the book across 
his knee, and close his eyes till the doctor should 
wake up again. And the skull was on the table 
between them, and from above the plum blossoms 
fluttered down, till they made flakes on it as white 
as Dr. Gallagher's hair. 

I don't want you to suppose that the Rev. Mr. 
Drone spent the whole of his time under the trees. 
Not at all. In point of fact, the rector's life was 

97 H 



Sunsliine Sketches 



one round of activity which he himself might 
deplore but was powerless to prevent. He had 
hardly sat down beneath the trees of an afternoon 
after his mid-day meal when there was the Infant 
Class at three, and after that, with scarcely an 
hour between, the Mothers' Auxiliary at five, and 
the next morning the Book Club, and that evening 
the Bible Study Class, and the next morning 
the Early Workers' Guild at eleven-thirty. The 
whole week was like that, and if one found time 
to sit down for an hour or so to recuperate, it was 
the most one could do. After all, if a busy man 
spends the little bit of leisure that he gets in 
advanced classical study, there is surely no harm 
in it. I suppose, take it all in all, there wasn't 
a busier man than the Rural Dean among the 
Anglican clergy of the diocese. 

If the Dean ever did snatch a half-day from his 
incessant work, he spent it in fishing. But not 
always that, for as likely as not instead of taking 
a real holiday he would put in the whole after- 
noon amusing the children and the boys that he 
knew, by making kites and toys and clockwork 
steamboats for them. 

It was fortunate for the Dean that he had the 
strange interest and aptitude for mechanical 
advices which he possessed, or otherwise this 
kind of thing would have been too cruel an imposi- 
tion. But the Rev. Mr. Drone had a curious 



The Bev. Mr. Drone 

liking for machinery. I think I never heard him 
preach a better sermon than the one on Aero- 
planes (Lo, what now see you on high JeremiahTwo) . 

So it was that he spent two whole days making 
a kite with Chinese wings for Teddy Moore, the 
photographer's son, and closed down the infant 
class for forty-eight hours so that Teddy Moore 
should not miss the pleasure of flying it, or 
rather seeing it flown. It is foolish to trust a 
Chinese kite to the hands of a young child. 

In the same way the Dean made a mechanical 
top for little Marjorie Trewlaney, the cripple, to 
see spun : it would have been unwise to allow 
the afflicted girl to spin it. There was no end 
to the things that Mr. Drone could make, and 
always for the children. Even when he was 
making the sand-clock for poor little Willie Yodel 
(who died, you know) the Dean went right on with 
it and gave it to another child with just the same 
pleasure. Death, you know, to the clergy is a 
different thing from what it is to us. The Dean 
and Mr. Gingham used often to speak of it as thej^ 
walked through the long grass of the new cemetery, 
the Necropolis, And when your Sunday walk is 
to your wife's grave, as the Dean's was, perhaps 
it seems different to anybody. 

The Church of England Church, I said, stood 
close to the rectory, a tall, sweeping church, 
and inside a great reach of polished cedar beams 

i 99 



Siiushine Sketches 



that ran to the point of the roof. There used to 
stand on the same spot the Httle stone church, 
that all the gro\Mi-up people in Mariposa still 
remember, a quaint little building in red and grey 
stone. About it was the old cemetery, but that 
was all smoothed out later into the grass plot 
round the new church, and the headstones laid 
out flat, and no new graves have been put there 
for ever so long. But the Mariposa children still 
walk round and read the headstones lying flat in 
the grass and look for the old ones, — because 
some of them are ever so old — forty or fifty years 
back. 

Nor are you to think from all this that the Dean 
was not a man ^^ith serious perplexities. You 
could easily convince yourself of the contrary. 
For if you watched the Rev. ]Mr. Drone as he sat 
reading in the Greek, you would notice that no 
very long period ever passed without his taking 
up a sheet or two of paper that lay between the 
leaves of the Theocritus and that were covered 
close with figures. 

And these the Dean would lay upon the rustic 
table, and he would add them up forwards and 
backwards, going first up the column and then 
down it to see that nothing had been left out, 
and then down it again to see what it was that 
must have been left out. 

Mathematics, you Vvill understand, were not 

lOO 



The Bev. Mr. Drone 



the Dean's forte. They never were the forte 
of the men who had been trained at the httle 
Anghcan college with the clipped hedges and the 
cricket ground, where Rupert Drone had taken 
the gold medal in Greek fifty-two years ago. 
You will see the medal at any time lying there 
in its open box on the rectory table, in case of 
immediate need. Any of the Drone girls, Lilian, 
or Jocelyn, or Theodora, would show it to you. 
But, as I say, mathematics were not the rector's 
forte, and he blamed for it (in a Christian spirit, 
you will understand) the memory of his mathe- 
matical professor, and often he spoke with great 
bitterness. I have often heard him say that in 
his opinion the colleges ought to dismiss, of course 
in a Christian spirit, all the professors who are 
not, in the most reverential sense of the term, 
fit for their jobs. 

No doubt many of the clergy of the diocese had 
suffered more or less just as the Dean had from 
lack of mathematical training. But the Dean 
always felt that his own case was especially to be 
lamented. For you see, if a man is trying to make 
a model aeroplane — for a poor family in the lower 
part of the town — and he is brought to a stop by 
the need of reckoning the coefficient of torsion of 
cast-iron rods, it shows plainly enough that the 
colleges are not truly filling their divine mission. 



lOI 



Sunshine Sketches 



But the figures that I speak of were not those 
of the model aeroplane. These were far more 
serious. Night and day they had been with the 
rector now for the best part of ten years, and they 
grew, if anything, more intricate. 

If, for example, you try to reckon the debt of a 
church — a large church with a great sweep of 
polished cedar beams inside, for the special 
glorification of the All Powerful, and with im- 
ported tiles on the roof for the greater glory of 
Heaven and with stained-glass windows for the 
exaltation of the All Seeing — if, I say, you try 
to reckon up the debt on such a church and figure 
out its interest and its present worth, less a fixed 
annual payment, it makes a pretty complicated 
sum. Then if you try to add to this the annual 
cost of insurance, and deduct from it three- 
quarters of a stipend, year by year, and then 
suddenly remember that three-quarters is too 
much because you have forgotten the boarding- 
school fees of the littlest of the Drones (including 
French, as an extra — she must have it, all the 
older girls did), you have got a sum that pretty 
well defies ordinary arithmetic. The provoking 
part of it was that the Dean knew perfectly well 
that with the help of logarithms he could have 
done the thing in a moment. But at the Anglican 
college they had stopped short at that very place 
in the book. They had simply explained that 

I02 



The Bev. Mr, Drone 



Logos was a word and Arithmos a number, which, 
at the time, seemed amply sufficient. 

So the Dean was perpetually taking out his 
sheets of figures, and adding them upwards and 
downwards, and they never came the same. 
Very often Mr. Gingham, who was a warden, 
would come and sit beside the rector and ponder 
over the figures, and Mr. Drone would explain 
that with a book of logarithms you could work 
it out in a moment. You would simply open 
the book and run your finger up the columns (he 
illustrated exactly the way in which the finger 
was moved), and there you were. Mr. Gingham 
said that it was a caution, and that logarithms 
(I quote his exact phrase) must be a terror. 

Very often, too, Nivens, the lawyer, who was 
a sidesman, and Mullins, the manager of the 
Exchange Bank, who was the chairman of the 
vestry, would come and take a look at the figures. 
But they never could make much of them, because 
the stipend part was not a matter that one could 
discuss. 

Mullins would notice the item for a hundred 
dollars due on fire insurance and would say, as a 
business man, that surely that couldn't be fire 
insurance, and the Dean would say surely not, 
and change it : and Mullins would say surely 
there couldn't be fifty dollars for taxes, because 
there weren't any taxes, and the Dean would 

103 



Sunshine Sketches 



admit that of course it couldn't be for the taxes. 
In fact, the truth is that the Dean's figures were 
badly mixed, and the fault lay indubitably with 
the mathematical professor of two generations 
back. 

It was always Mullins's intention some day to 
look into the finances of the church, the more so 
as his father had been with Dean Drone at the 
Httle Anglican college with the cricket ground. 
But he was a busy man. As he explained to the 
rector himself, the banking business nowadays 
is getting to be such that a banker can hardly 
call even his Sunday mornings his own. Certainly 
Henry Mullins could not. They belonged largely 
to Smith's Hotel, and during the fishing season 
they belonged away down the lake, so far away 
that practically no one, unless it was George Duff 
of the Commercial Bank, could see them. 

But to think that all this trouble had come 
through the building of the new church. 

That was the bitterness of it. 

For the twenty-five years that Rural Dean 
Drone had preached in the little stone church, 
it had been his one aim, as he often put it in his 
sermons, to rear a larger Ark in Gideon. His one 
hope had been to set up a greater Evidence, or, 
very simply stated, to kindle a Brighter Beacon. 

After twenty-five years of waiting, he had been 
able at last to kindle it. Everybody in Mariposa 
104 



The Bev. Mr. Drone 

remembers the building of the church. First 
of all they had demolished the little stone church 
to make way for the newer Evidence. It seemed 
almost a sacrilege, as the Dean himself said, to 
lay hands on it. Indeed it was at first proposed 
to take the stone of it and build it into a Sunday 
School, as a lesser testimony. Then, when that 
proved impracticable, it was suggested that the 
stone be reverently fashioned into a wall that 
should stand as a token. And when even that 
could not be managed, the stone of the little church 
was laid reverently into a stone pile ; after- 
wards it was devoutly sold to a building contractor, 
and, like so much else in life, was forgotten. 

But the building of the church, no one, I think, 
will forget. The Dean threw himself into the 
work. With his coat off and his white shirt 
sleeves conspicuous among the gang that were 
working at the foundations, he set his hand to 
the shovel, himself guided the road-scraper, 
urging on the horses, cheering and encouraging 
the men, till they begged him to desist. He 
mingled with the stone-masons, advising, helping, 
and giving counsel, till they pleaded with him 
to rest. He was among the carpenters, sawing, 
hammering, enquiring, suggesting, till they be- 
sought him to lay off. And he was night and day 
with the architect's assistants, drawing, planning, 
revising, till the architect told him to cut it out. 

10=; 



Sunshine Sketches 



So great was his activity, that I doubt whether 
the new church would ever have been finished, 
had not the wardens and the vestry men insisted 
that Mr. Drone must take a hoHday and sent him 
on the Mackinaw trip up the lakes, — the only 
foreign travel of the Dean's life. 

So in due time the New Church was built and 
it towered above the maple trees of Mariposa 
like a beacon on a hill. It stood so high that 
from the open steeple of it, where the bells were, 
you could see all the town lying at its feet, and the 
farmsteads to the south of it, and the railway like 
a double pencil line, and Lake Wissanotti spread 
out like a map. You could see and appreciate 
things from the height of the new church, — such 
as the size and the growing wealth of Mariposa, — 
that you never could have seen from the little 
stone church at all. 

Presently the church was opened and the Dean 
preached his first sermon in it and he called it a 
Greater Testimony, and he said that it was an 
earnest, or first fruit of endeavour, and that it 
was a token or pledge, and he named it also a 
covenant. He said, too, that it was an anchorage 
and a harbour and a lighthouse as well as being a 
city set upon a hill ; and he ended by declaring 
it an Ark of Refuge and notified them that the 
Bible Class would meet in the basement of 
io5 



The Bev. Mr. Drone 



it on that and every other third Wednes- 
day. 

In the opening months of preaching about it 
the Dean had called the church so often an earnest 
and a pledge and a guerdon and a tabernacle, 
that I think he used to forget that it wasn't paid 
for. It was only when the agent of the building 
society and a representative of the Hosanna Pipe 
and Steam Organ Co. (Limited), used to call for 
quarterly payments that he was suddenly re- 
minded of the fact. Always after these men came 
round the Dean used to preach a special sermon on 
sin, in the course of which he would mention that 
the ancient Hebrews used to put unjust traders to 
death, — a thing of which he spoke with Christian 
serenity. 

I don't think that at first anybody troubled 
much about the debt on the church. Dean 
Drone's figures showed that it was only a matter 
of time before it would be extinguished ; only a 
little effort was needed, a little girding up of the 
loins of the congregation and they could shoulder 
the whole debt and trample it under their feet. 
Let them but set their hands to the plough and 
they could soon guide it into the deep water. 
Then they might furl their sails and sit every man 
under his own olive tree. 

Meantime, while the congregation was waiting 
to gird up its loins, the interest on the debt was 
107 



Swishine Sketches 



paid somehow, or, when it v/asn't paid, was added 
to the principal. 

I don't know whether you have had any 
experience with Greater Testimonies and with 
Beacons set on Hills. If you have, you will 
realize how, at first gradually, and then rapidly, 
their position from year to year grows more 
distressing. What with the building loan and 
the organ instalment, and the fire insurance, — 
a cruel charge, — and the heat and light, the rector 
began to realize as he added up the figures that 
nothing but logarithms could solve them. Then 
the time came when not only the rector, but all 
the wardens knew and the sidesmen knew that 
the debt was more than the church could carry ; 
then the choir knew and the congregation knew 
and at last everybody knew ; and there were 
special collections at Easter and special days of 
giving, and special weeks of tribulation, and 
special arrangements with the Hosanna Pipe 
and Steam Organ Co. And it was noticed that 
when the Rural Dean announced a service of 
Lenten Sorrow, — aimed more especially at the 
business men, — the congregation had diminished 
by forty per cent. 

I suppose things are just the same elsewhere, — 
I mean the peculiar kind of discontent that crept 
into the Church of England congregation in 
1 08 



The Bev. Mr. Drone 

Mariposa after the setting up of the Beacon. There 
were those who claimed that they had seen the 
error from the first, though they had kept quiet, 
as such people always do, from breadth of mind. 
There wxre those who had felt years before how 
it would end, but their lips were sealed, from 
humility of spirit. What was worse w^as that 
there were others who grew dissatisfied with the 
whole conduct of the church. 

Yodel, the auctioneer, for example, narrated 
how he had been to the city and had gone into a 
service of the Roman Catholic church : I believe, 
to state it more fairly, he had " dropped in," — 
the only recognized means of access to such a 
service. He claimed that the music that he had 
heard there was music, and that (outside of his 
profession), the chanting and intoning could not 
be touched. 

Ed Moore, the photographer, also related that 
he had listened to a sermon in the city, and that 
if anyone would guarantee him a sermon like that, 
he would defy you to keep him away from church. 
Meanwhile, failing the guarantee, he stayed away. 

The very doctrines were impeached. Some of 
the congregation began to cast doubts on eternal 
punishment, — doubts so grave as to keep them 
absent from the Lenten Services of Sorrow. 
Indeed, Lawyer Macartney took up the whole 
question of the Athanasian Creed one afternoon 

109 



Swishme SketcJies 



with Joe Milligan, the dentist, and hardly left 
a clause of it intact. 

All this time, you will understand, Dean Drone 
kept on with his special services, and leaflets, 
calls, and appeals went out from the Ark of 
Gideon like rockets from a sinking ship. More 
and more with every month the debt of the church 
lay heavy on his mind. At times he forgot it. 
At other times he woke up in the night and 
thought about it. Sometimes as he went down 
the street from the lighted precincts of the Greater 
Testimony and passed the Salvation Army, 
praying around a naphtha lamp under the open 
sky, it smote him to the heart with a stab. 

But the congregation were wrong, I think, in 
imputing fault to the sermons of Dean Drone. 
There I do think they were wrong. I can speak 
from personal knowledge when I say that the 
rector's sermons were not only stimulating in 
matters of faith, but contained valuable material 
in regard to the Greek language, to modern 
machinery and to a variety of things that should 
have proved of the highest advantage to the 
congregation. 

There was, I say, the Greek language. The 
Dean always showed the greatest delicacy of 
feeling in regard to any translation in or out of it 
that he made from the pulpit. He was never 
willing to accept even the faintest shade of 
no 



TJie Rev. Mr. Drone 

rendering different from that commonly given 
without being assured of the full concurrence of 
the congregation. Either the translation must be 
unanimous and without contradiction, or he could 
not pass it. He would pause in his sermon and 
would say : " The original Greek is ' Hoson,' 
but perhaps you will allow me to translate it as 
equivalent to ' Hoy on.' " And they did. So that 
if there was any fault to be found it was purely 
on the side of the congregation for not entering 
a protest at the time. 

It was the same way in regard to machinery. 
After all, what better illustrates the supreme 
purpose of the All Wise than such a thing as the 
dynamo or the reciprocating marine engine or 
the pictures in the Scientific American. 

Then, too, if a man has had the opportunity 
to travel and has seen the great lakes spread out 
by the hand of Providence from where one leaves 
the new dock at the Sound to where one arrives 
safe and thankful with one's dear fellow-pas- 
sengers in the spirit at the concrete landing stage 
at Mackinaw — is not this fit and proper material 
for the construction of an analogy or illustration ? 
Indeed, even apart from an analogy, is it not 
mighty interesting to narrate, anyway ? In any 
case, why should the churchwardens have sent 
the rector on the Mackinaw trip, if they had not 
expected him to make some little return for it ? 
Ill 



Sunshine Sketches 



I lay some stress on this point because the 
criticisms directed against the Mackinaw sermons 
always seemed so unfair. If the rector had 
described his experiences in the crude language 
of the ordinary newspaper, there might, I admit, 
have been something unfitting about it. But he 
was always careful to express himself in a way 
that showed, — or, listen, let me explain with an 
example. 

" It happened to be my lot some years ago," 
he would say, " to find myself a voyager, just as 
one is a voyager on the sea of life, on the broad 
expanse of water which has been spread out to 
the north-west of us by the hand of Providence, 
at a height of five hundred and eighty-one feet 
above the level of the sea, — I refer, I may say, 
to Lake Huron." 

Now, how different that is from saying : " I'll 
never forget the time I went on the Mackinaw 
trip." The whole thing has a different sound 
entirely. In the same way the Dean would go 
on : 

" I was voyaging on one of those magnificent 
leviathans of the water, — I refer to the boats of 
the Northern Navigation Company — and was 
standing beside the forward rail talking with a 
dear brother in the faith who was journeying 
westward also — I may say he was a commercial 
traveller, — and beside us was a dear sister in the 



The Bev. Mr. Drone 



spirit seated in a deck chair, while near us were 
two other dear souls in grace engaged in Christian 
pastime on the deck, — I allude more particularly 
to the game of deck billiards." 

I leave it to any reasonable man whether with 
that complete and fair-minded explanation of 
the environment, it was not perfectly proper to 
close down the analogy, as the rector did, with 
the simple words : " In fact, it was an extremely 
fine morning." 

Yet there were some people, even in Mariposa, 
that took exception and spent their Sunday 
dinner time in making out that they couldn't 
understand what Dean Drone was talking about, 
and asking one another if they knew. Once, as 
he passed out from the doors of the Greater 
Testimony, the rector heard some one say : " The 
Church would be all right if that old mugwump 
was out of the pulpit." It went to his heart like 
a barbed thorn, and stayed there. 

You know, perhaps, how a remark of that sort 
can stay and rankle, and make you wish you could 
hear it again to make sure of it, because perhaps 
you didn't hear it aright, and it was a mistake 
after all. Perhaps no one said it, anyway. You 
ought to have written it down at the time. I 
have seen the Dean take down the encyclopaedia 
in the rectory, and move his finger slowly down 
the pages of the letter M, looking for mugwump. 

II-, I 



Swishine Sketches 



But it wasn't there. I have known him, in his 
little study upstairs, turn over the pages of the 
' Animals of Palestine,' looking for a mugwump. 
But there was none there. It must have been 
unknown in the greater days of Judea. 

So things went on from month to month, and 
from year to year, and the debt and the charges 
loomed like a dark and gathering cloud on the 
horizon. I don't mean to say that efforts were 
not made to face the difficulty and to fight it. 
They w^ere. Time after time the workers of the 
congregation got together and thought out plans 
for the extinction of the debt. But somehow, 
after every trial, the debt grew larger with each 
year, and every system that could be devised 
turned out more hopeless than the last. 

They began, I think, with the " endless chain " 
of letters of appeal. You may remember the 
device, for it was all-popular in clerical circles 
some ten or fifteen years ago. You got a number 
of people to write each of them three letters asking 
for ten cents from three each of their friends and 
asking each of them to send on three similar 
letters. Three each from three each, and three 
each more from each ! Do you observe the won- 
derful ingenuity of it ? Nobody, I think, has 
forgotten how the Willing Workers of the Church 
of England Church of Mariposa sat down in the 
114 



The Bev. Mr, Drone 

vestry room in the basement with a pile of 
stationery three feet high, sending out the letters. 
Some, I know, will never forget it. Certainly 
not Mr. Pupkin, the teller in the Exchange Bank, 
for it was here that he met Zena Pepperleigh, 
the judge's daughter, for the first time ; and they 
worked so busily that they wrote out ever so 
many letters — eight or nine — in a single afternoon, 
and they discovered that their handwritings were 
awfully alike, which was one of the most extra- 
ordinary and amazing coincidences, you will 
admit, in the history of chirography. 

But the scheme failed — failed utterly. I don't 
know why. The letters went out and were copied 
broadcast and recopied, till you could see the 
Mariposa endless chain winding its way towards 
the Rocky Mountains. But they never got the 
ten cents. The Willing Workers wrote for it in 
thousands, but by some odd chance they never 
struck the person who had it. 

Then after that there came a regular winter of 
effort. First of all they had a bazaar that was got 
up by the Girls' Auxiliar^^ and held in the base- 
ment of the church. All the girls wore special 
costimies that were brought up from the city, and 
they had booths, where there was every imaginable 
thing for sale, pincushion covers, and chair 
covers, and sofa covers, everything that you can 
think of. If the people had once started buying 
115 



Sunslmie Sketches 



them, the debt would have been Hfted in no time. 
Even as it was the bazaar only lost twenty dollars. 
After that, I think, was the magic lantern 
lecture that Dean Drone gave on " Italy and her 
Invaders." They got the lantern and the slides 
up from the city, and it was simply splendid. 
Some of the slides were perhaps a little confusing, 
but it was all there, — the pictures of the dense 
Italian jungle and the crocodiles and the naked 
invaders with their invading clubs. It was a pity 
that it was such a bad night, snowing hard, and a 
curling match on, or they would have made a lot 
of money out of the lecture. As it was the loss, 
apart from the breaking of the lantern, which 
was unavoidable, was quite trifling. 

I can hardly remember all the things that there 
were after that. I recollect that it was always 
Mullins who arranged about renting the hall and 
printing the tickets and all that sort of thing. 
His father, you remember, had been at the 
Anglican college with Dean Drone, and though 
the rector was thirty-seven years older than 
Mullins, he leaned upon him, in matters of 
business, as upon a staff ; and though Mullins was 
thirty-seven years younger than the Dean, he 
leaned against him, in matters of doctrine, as 
against a rock. 

At one time they got the idea that what the 
ii6 



The Bev. Mr. Drone 

public wanted was not anything instructive but 
something Hght and amusing. MulHns said that 
people loved to laugh. He said that if you get a 
lot of people all together and get them laughing, 
you can do anything you like with them. Once 
they start to laugh they are lost. So they got 
Mr. Dreery, the English Literature teacher at the 
high school, to give an evening of readings from 
the Great Humorists from Chaucer to Adam 
Smith. They came mighty near to making 
barrel of money out of that. If the people had 
once started laughing it would have been all 
over with them. As it was I heard a lot of them 
say that they simply wanted to scream with 
laughter : they said they just felt like bursting 
into peals of laughter all the time. Even when, in 
the more subtle parts, they didn't feel like bursting 
out laughing, they said they had all they could do 
to keep from smiling. They said they never had 
such a hard struggle in their lives not to smile. 

In fact the chairman said when he put the vote 
of thanks that he was sure if people had known 
what the lecture was to be like there would have 
been a much better " turn-out." But you see 
all that the people had to go on was just the 
announcement of the name of the lecturer, Mr. 
Dreery, and that he would lecture on English 
Hrmiour All Seats Twenty-five Cents. As the 
chairman expressed it himself, if the people had 
117 



Sunshine Sketches 



had any idea, any idea at all, of what the lecture 
would be like they would have been there in 
hundreds. But how could they get an idea that 
it would be so amusing with practically nothing 
to go upon ? 

After that attempt things seemed to go from 
bad to worse. Nearly everybody was disheartened 
about it. What would have happened to the 
debt, or whether they would have ever paid it 
off, is more than I can say, if it hadn't occurred 
that light broke in on Mullins in the strangest 
and most surprising way you can imagine. It 
happened that he went away for his bank holidays, 
and while he was away he happened to be present 
in one of the big cities and saw how they went at 
it there to raise money. He came home in such 
a state of excitement that he went straight up 
from the Mariposa station to the rectory, valise 
and all, and he burst in one April evening to where 
the Rural Dean was sitting with the three girls be- 
side the lamp in the front room and he cried out : 

" Mr. Drone, Tve got it, — I've got a way that 
will clear the debt before you're a fortnight older. 
We'll have a Whirlwind Campaign in Mariposa ! " 

But stay ! The change from the depth of 
depression to the pinnacle of hope is too abrupt. 
I must pause and tell you in another chapter of 
the Wliirlwind Campaign in Mariposa. 
iiS 



Chapter V 

The Whirhvind Campaign in 
Mariposa 

IT was Mullins, the banker, who told Mariposa 
all about the plan of a Whirlwind Campaign 
and explained how it was to be done. He'd 
happened to be in one of the big cities when 
they were raising money by a Whirlwind Cam- 
paign for one of the universities, and he saw it all. 

He said he would never forget the scene on the 
last day of it when the announcement was made 
that the total of the money raised was even more 
than what was needed. It was a splendid sight, — 
the business men of the town all cheering and 
laughing and shaking hands, and the professors 
with the tears streaming down their faces, and 
the Deans of the Faculties, who had given money 
themselves, sobbing aloud. 

He said it was the most moving thing he ever 
saw. 

So, as I said, Henry Mullins, who had seen it, 
explained to the others how it was done. He 
said that first of all a few of the business men got 
together quietly, — very quietly, indeed the more 

119 



Sunshine Sketches 



quietly the better, — and talked things over. 
Perhaps one of them would dine, — just quietly, — 
with another one and discuss the situation. 
Then these two would invite a third man, — pos- 
sibly even a fourth, — to have lunch with them 
and talk in a general way, — even talk of other 
things part of the time. And so on in this way 
things would be discussed and looked at in 
different lights and viewed from different angles 
and then when everything was ready they would 
go at things with a rush. A central committee 
would be formed and sub-committees with cap- 
tains of each group and recorders and secretaries, 
and on a stated day the Whirlwind Campaign 
would begin. 

Each day the crowd would all agree to meet 
at some stated place and eat lunch together, — 
say at a restaurant or at a club or at some eating 
place. This would go on every day with the 
interest getting keener and keener, and every- 
body getting more and more excited, till presently 
the chairman would announce that the cam- 
paign had succeeded and there w^ould be the 
kind of scene that Mullins had described. 

So that was the plan that they set in motion 
in Mariposa. 

I don't wish to say too much about the Whirl- 
wind Campaign itself. I don't mean to say that 
1 20 



The WJiirlivind Campaign 

it was a failure. On the contrary, in many ways 
it couldn't have been a greater success, and yet 
somehow it didn't seem to work out just as Henry 
Mullins had said it would. It may be that there are 
differences between Mariposa and the larger cities 
that one doesn't appreciate at first sight. Perhaps 
it would have been better to try some other plan. 

Yet they followed along the usual line of 
things closely enough. They began with the 
regular system of some of the business men getting 
together in a quiet way. 

First of all, for example, Henry Mullins came 
over quietly to Duff's rooms, over the Com- 
mercial Bank, with a bottle of rye whiskey, and 
they talked things over. And the night after 
that George Duff came over quietly to Mullins 's 
rooms, over the Exchange Bank, with a bottle 
of Scotch whiskey. A few evenings after that 
Mullins and Duff went together, in a very unos- 
tentatious way, with perhaps a couple of bottles 
of rye, to Pete Glover's room over the hardware 
store. And then all three of them went up one 
night with Ed Moore, the photographer, to Judge 
Pepperleigh's house under pretence of having a 
game of poker. The very day after that, Mullins 
and Duff and Ed Moore, and Pete Glover and 
the judge got Will Harrison, the harness maker, 
to go out without any formality on the lake on 
the pretext of fishing. And the next night after 

121 



Sunshine Sketches 



that Duff and Mullins and Ed Moore and Pete 
Glover and Pepperleigh and Will Harrison got Alf 
Trelawney, the postmaster, to come over, just in a 
casual way, to the Mariposa House, after the night 
mail, and the next day Mullins and Duff and 

But, pshaw ! you see at once how the thing is 
worked. There's no need to follow that part of 
the Whirlwind Campaign further. But it just 
shows the power of organization. 

And all this time, mind you, they were talking 
things over, and looking at things first in one light 
and then in another light, — in fact, just doing 
as the big city men do when there's an important 
thing like this under way. 

So after things had been got pretty well into 
shape in this way, Duff asked Mullins one night, 
straight out, if he v/ould be chairman of the 
Central Committee. He sprung it on him and 
Mullins had no time to refuse, but he put it to 
Duff straight whether he would be treasurer. 
And Duff had no time to refuse. 

That gave things a start, and within a week they 
had the whole organization on foot. There was 
the Grand Central Committee and six groups or 
sub-committees of twenty men each, and a 
captain for every group. They had it all 
arranged on the lines most Hkely to be effective. 

In one group there were all the bankers, 

122 



The Whirhvind Campaign 

Mullims and Duff and Pupkin (with the cameo 
pin), and about four others. They had their 
photographs taken at Ed Moore's studio, taken 
in a hne with a background of icebergs — a winter 
scene — and a pretty penetrating crowd they 
looked, I can tell you. After all, you know, if 
you get a crowd of representative bank men 
together in any financial deal, you've got a pretty 
considerable leverage right away. 

In the second group were the lawyers, Nivens 
and Macartney and the rest — about as level- 
headed a lot as you'd see anywhere. Get the 
lawyers of a town with you on a thing like this 
and you'll find you've got a sort of brain power 
with you that you'd never get without them. 

Then there were the business men — there was 
a solid crowd for you, — Harrison, the harness 
maker, and Glover, the hardware man, and all 
that gang, not talkers, perhaps, but soHd men 
who can tell you to a nicety how many cents 
there are in a dollar. It's all right to talk 
about education and that sort of thing, but if 
you want driving power and efficiency, get busi- 
ness men. They're seeing it every day in the city, 
and it's just the same in Mariposa. Why, in the 
big concerns in the city, if they found out a 
man was educated, they wouldn't have him, — 
wouldn't keep him there a minute. That's why 
the business men have to conceal it so much. 

123 



Sunshine Sketches 



Then in the other teams there were the doctors 
and the newspaper men and the professional 
men Hke Judge Pepperleigh and Yodel the 
auctioneer. 

It was all organized so that every team had 
its headquarters, two of them in each of the three 
hotels — one upstairs and one down. And it was 
arranged that there would be a big lunch every 
day, to be held in Smith's caff, round the corner 
of Smith's Northern Health Resort and Home of 
the Wissanotti Angler, — you know the place. 
The lunch was divided up into tables, with a 
captain for each table to see about things to 
drink, and of course all the tables were in 
competition with one another. In fact the 
competition was the very life of the whole thing. 

It's just wonderful how these things run when 
they're organized. Take the first luncheon, for 
example. There they all were, every man in his 
place, every captain at his post at the top of the 
table. It was hard, perhaps, for some of them to 
get there. They had very likely to be in their 
stores and banks and ofhces till the last minute 
and then make a dash for it. It was the cleanest 
piece of team work you ever saw. 

You have noticed already, I am sure, that a 
good many of the captains and committee men 
didn't belong to the Church of England Church. 
124 



The Wliirlwind Campaign 

Glover, for instance, was a Presbyterian, till 
they ran the picket fence of the manse two feet 
on to his property, and after that he became a free 
thinker. But in Mariposa, as I have said, every- 
body likes to be in everything and naturally a 
Whirlwind Campaign was a novelty. Anyway it 
would have been a poor business to keep a man out 
of the lunches merely on account of his religion. 
I trust that the day for that kind of religious 
bigotry is past. 

Of course the excitement was when Henry 
Mullins at the head of the table began reading 
out the telegrams and letters and messages. 
First of all there was a telegram of good wishes 
from the Anglican Lord Bishop of the Diocese 
to Henry Mullins and calling him Dear Brother 
in Grace — the Mariposa telegraph office is a little 
unreliable and it read : " Dear Brother in grease," 
but that was good enough. The Bishop said 
that his most earnest wishes were with them. 

Then Mullins read a letter from the Mayor of 
Mariposa — Pete Glover was mayor that year — 
stating that his keenest desires were with them : 
and then one from the Carriage Company saying 
that its heartiest good will was all theirs ; and 
then one from the Meat Works saying that its 
nearest thoughts were next to them. Then he 
read one from himself, as head of the Exchange 
Bank, you understand, informing him that he had 
125 



Sunshifie Sketches 



heard of his project and assuring him of his 
hvehest interest in what he proposed. 

At each of these telegrams and messages there 
was round after round of applause, so that you 
could hardly hear yourself speak or give an 
order. But that was nothing to when Mullins 
got up again, and beat on the table for silence 
and made one of those cracking, concise speeches 
— just the way business men speak — the kind 
of speech that a college man simply can't make. 
I wish I could repeat it all. I remember that it 
began : " Now boys, you knov/ what we're here 
for, gentlemen," and it went on just as good as 
that all through. 

When Mullins had done he took out a fountain 
pen and wrote out a cheque for a hundred dollars, 
conditional on the fund reaching fifty thousand. 
And there was a burst of cheers all over the room. 

Just the moment he had done it, up sprang 
George Duff, — you know the keen competition 
there is, as a straight matter of business, between 
the banks in Mariposa, — up sprang George Duff, 
I say, and wrote out a cheque for another hundred 
conditional on the fund reaching seventy thousand. 
You never heard such cheering in your life. 

And then when Netley walked up to the head 

of the table and laid down a cheque for a hundred 

dollars conditional on the fund reaching one 

hundred thousand the room was in an uproar. A 

126 



The Whirlwind Campaign 

hundred thousand dollars ! Just think of it ! 
The figures fairly stagger one. To think of a 
hundred thousand dollars raised in five minutes 
in a little place like Mariposa ! 

And even that was nothing ! In less than no 
time there was such a crowd round Mullins trying 
to borrow his pen all at once that his waistcoat 
was all stained with ink. Finally when they 
got order at last, and Mullins stood up and 
announced that the conditional fund had reached 
a quarter of a million, the whole place was a 
perfect babel of cheering. Oh, these Whirlwind 
Campaigns are wonderful things ! 

I can tell you the Committee felt pretty proud 
that first day. There was Henry Mullins looking 
a little bit flushed and excited, with his white 
waistcoat and an American Beauty rose, and with 
ink marks all over him from the cheque signing ; 
and he kept telling them that he'd known all along 
that all th^t was needed was to get the thing 
started and telling again about what he'd seen 
at the University Campaign and about the pro- 
fessors crying, and wondering if the high school 
teachers would come down for the. last day of the 
meetings. 

Looking back on the Mariposa Whirlwind, I 
can never feel that it was a failure. After all, 
there is a sympathy and a brotherhood in these 
127 



Swishiiie Sketches 



things when men work shoulder to shoulder. If 
you had seen the canvassers of the Committee 
going round the town that evening shoulder to 
shoulder from the Mariposa House to the Con- 
tinental and up to Mulhns's rooms and over to 
Duff's, shoulder to shoulder, you'd have under- 
stood it. 

I don't say that every lunch was quite such a 
success as the first. It's not always easy to get 
out of the store if you're a busy man, and a good 
many of the Whirlwind Committee found that 
they had just time to hurry down and snatch 
their lunch and get back again. Still, they came, 
and snatched it. As long as the lunches lasted, 
they came. Even if they had simply to rush it 
and grab something to eat and drink without 
time to talk to anybody, they came. 

No, no, it was not lack of enthusiasm that killed 
the Whirlwind Campaign in Mariposa. It must 
have been something else. I don't just know 
what it was but I think it had something to do 
with the financial, the book-keeping side of the 
thing. 

It may have been, too, that the organization 
was not quite correctly planned. You see, if 
practically everybody is on the committees, it is 
awfully hard to try to find men to canvass, and 
it is not allowable for the captains and the Com- 
mittee men to canvass one another, because their 
128 



The Wliirhvind Campaign 

gifts are spontaneous. So the only thing that 
the different groups could do was to wait round 
in some likely place — say the bar parlour of 
Smith's Hotel — in the hope that somebody might 
come in who could be canvassed. 

You might ask why they didn't canvass Mr. 
Smith himself, but of course they had done that 
at the very start, as I should have said. Mr. 
Smith had given them two hundred dollars in 
cash conditional on the lunches being held in the 
caff of his hotel ; and it's awfully hard to get a 
proper lunch — I mean the kind to which a Bishop 
can express regret at not being there — under a 
dollar twenty-five. So Mr. Smith got back his 
own money, and the crowd began eating into the 
benefactions, and it got more and more compli- 
cated whether to hold another lunch in the hope 
of breaking even, or to stop the campaign. 

It was disappointing, yes. In spite of all the 
success and the sympathy, it was disappointing. 
I don't say it didn't do good. No doubt a lot of 
the men got to know one another better than ever 
they had before. I have myself heard Judge 
Pepperleigh say that after the campaign he knew 
all of Pete Glover that he wanted to. There was 
a lot of that kind of complete satiety. The real 
trouble about the Whirlwind Campaign was that 
they never clearly understood which of them were 
the whirlwind and who were to be the campaign. 

129 K 



Sunshine Sketches 



Some of them, I believe, took it pretty much to 
heart. I know that Henry MulHns did. You 
could see it. The first day he came down to the 
lunch, all dressed up with the American Beauty 
and the white waistcoat. The second day he 
only wore a pink carnation and a grey waistcoat. 
The third day he had on a dead daffodil and a 
cardigan undervest, and on the last day, when the 
high school teachers should have been there, 
he only wore his office suit and he hadn't even 
shaved. He looked beaten. 

It was that night that he went up to the rectory 
to tell the news to Dean Drone. It had been 
arranged, you know, that the rector should not 
attend the lunches, so as to let the whole thing 
come as a surprise ; so that all he knew about 
it was just scraps of information about the crowds 
at the lunch and how they cheered and all that. 
Once, I believe, he caught sight of the Newspacket 
with the two-inch headline : A QUARTER OF 
A MILLION, but he wouldn't let himself read 
further because it would have spoilt the surprise. 

I saw Mullins, as I say, go up the street on his 
way to Dean Drone's. It was middle April and 
there was ragged snow on the streets and the 
nights were dark still, and cold. I saw Mullins 
grit his teeth as he walked, and I know that he 
held in his coat pocket his own cheque for the 
hundred, with the condition taken off it, and he 
130 



The WJiirlwind Campaign 

said that there were so many skunks in Marippsa 
that a man might as well be in the Head Office 
in the city. 

The Dean came out to the little gate in the dark, 
— you could see the lamplight behind him from 
the open door of the rectory, — and he shook hands 
with Mullins and they went in together. 



31 



Chapter VI 
The Beacon on the Hill 

MULLINS said afterward that it was ever 
so much easier than he thought it 
would have been. The Dean, he said, 
was so quiet. Of course if Mr. Drone had 
started to swear at MuHins, or tried to strike him, 
it would have been much harder. But as it was 
he was so quiet that part of the time he hardly 
seemed to follow what Mullins was saying. So 
Mullins was glad of that because it proved that 
the Dean wasn't feeling disappointed as, in a 
way, he might have. 

Indeed, the only time when the rector seemed 
animated and excited in the whole interview was 
when Mullins said that the campaign had been 
ruined by a lot of confounded mugwumps. 
Straight away the Dean asked if those mug- 
wumps had really prejudiced the outcome of the 
campaign. Mullins said there was no doubt of 
it, and the Dean enquired if the presence of 
mugwumps was fatal in matters of endeavour, and 
Mullins said that it was. Then the rector asked 

133 



Sunshiiie Sketches 



if even one mugwump was, in the Christian 
sense, deleterious. Mullins said that one mug- 
wump would kill anything. After that the Dean 
hardly spoke at all. 

In fact, the rector presently said that he mustn't 
detain Mullins too long and that he had detained 
him too long already and that Mullins must be 
weary from his train journey and that in cases 
of extreme weariness nothing but a sound sleep 
was of any avail ; he himself, unfortunately, 
would not be able to avail himself of the priceless 
boon of slumber until he had first retired to his 
study to write some letters ; so that Mullins, who 
had a certain kind of social quickness of intuition, 
saw that it was time to leave and went away. 

It was midnight as he went down the street, 
and a dark, still night. That can be stated posi- 
tively because it came out in court afterwards. 
Mullins swore that it was a dark night ; he admitted, 
under examination, that there may have been the 
stars, or at least some of the less important of 
them, though he had made no attempt, as brought 
out on cross-examination, to count them : there 
may have been, too, the electric lights, and Mullins 
was not willing to deny that it was quite possible 
that there was more or less moonlight. But that 
there was no light that night in the form of 
sunlight, Mullins was absolutely certain. All 
that, I say, came out in court. 

134 



The Beacon on the Hill 

But meanwhile the rector had gone upstairs 
to his study and had seated himself in front of 
his table to write his letters. It was here always 
that he wrote his sermons. From the window of 
the room you looked through the bare white 
maple trees to the sweeping outline of the church 
shadowed against the night sky, and beyond 
that, though far off, was the new cemetery 
where the rector walked of a Sunday (I think I 
told you why) : beyond that again, for the 
window faced the east, there lay, at no very great 
distance, the New Jerusalem. There were no 
better things that a man might look towards 
from his study window, nor anything that could 
serve as a better aid to writing. 

But this night the Dean's letters must have 
been difficult indeed to write. For he sat beside 
the table holding his pen and with his head bent 
upon his other hand, and though he sometimes 
put a line or two on the paper, for the most part 
he sat motionless. The fact is that Dean Drone 
was not trying to write letters, but only one letter. 
He was writing a letter of resignation. If you 
have not done that for forty years it is extremely 
difficult to get the words. 

So at least the Dean found it. First he wrote 
one set of words and then he sat and thought 
and wrote something else. But nothing seemed 
to suit. 

135 



Sunshine Sketches 



The real truth was that Dean Drone, perhaps 
more than he knew himself, had a fine taste for 
words and effects, and when you feel that a 
situation is entirely out of the common, you 
naturally try, if you have that instinct, to give it 
the right sort of expression. 

I believe that at the time when Rupert Drone 
had taken the medal in Greek over fifty years ago, 
was only a twist of fate that had prevented him 
from becoming a great writer. There was a 
buried author in him just as there was a buried 
financier in Jefferson Thorpe. In fact, there 
were many people in Mariposa like that, and for 
all I know you may yourself have seen such 
elsewhere. For instance, I am certain that Billy 
Rawson, the telegraph operator at Mariposa, 
could easily have invented radium. In the same 
way one has only to read the advertisements of 
Mr. Gingham, the undertaker, to know that there 
is still in him a poet, who could have written on 
death far more attractive verses than the Thana- 
topsis of Cullen Bryant, and under a title less 
likely to offend the public and drive away custom. 
He has told me this himself. 

So the Dean tried first this and then that and 
nothing would seem to suit. First of all he wrote : 

" It is now forty years since I came among you, 
a youth full of life and hope and ardent in the 

work before me " Then he paused, doubtful 

136 



The Beacon on the Hill 

of the accuracy and clearness of the expression, 
read it over again and again in deep thought and 
then began again : 

" It is now forty years since I came among you, 
a broken and melancholy boy, without life or 
hope, desiring only to devote to the service of 
this parish such few years as might remain of an 

existence blighted before it had truly begun " 

And then again the Dean stopped. He read 
what he had written ; he frowned ; he crossed it 
through with his pen. This was no way to write, 
this thin egotistical strain of complaint. Once 
more he started : 

" It is now forty years since I came among you, 
a man already tempered and trained, except 

possibly in mathematics " And then again 

the rector paused and his mind drifted away to 
the memory of the Anglican professor that I 
spoke of, who had had so little sense of his higher 
mission as to omit the teaching of logarithms. 
And the rector mused so long that when he began 
again it seemed to him that it was simpler and 
better to discard the personal note altogether, 
and he wrote : 

" There are times, gentlemen, in the life of a 
parish, when it comes to an epoch which bring it to 
a moment when it reaches a point " 

The Dean stuck fast again, but refusing this time 
to be beaten went resolutely on : 

137 



Sunshine Sketches 



" — reaches a point where the circumstances of 
the moment make the epoch such as to focus the 
Hfe of the parish in that time." 

Then the Dean saw that he was beaten, and he 
knew that he not only couldn't manage the parish 
but couldn't say so in proper English, and of the 
two the last was the bitterer discovery. 

He raised his head, and looked for a moment 
through the window at the shadow of the church 
against the night, so outlined that you could 
almost fancy that the light of the New Jerusalem 
was beyond it. Then he wrote, and this time 
not to the world at large but only to Mullins : 

" My dear Harry, I want to resign my charge. 
Will you come over and help me ? " 

When the Dean at last rose from writing that, 
I think it was far on in the night. As he rose he 
looked again through the window, looked once 
and then once more, and so stood with widening 
eyes, and his face set towards what he saw. 

What was that ? That light in the sky, there 
eastward ? — near or far he could not say. Was it 
already the dawn of the New Jerusalem brighten- 
ing in the east, or was it — look — in the church 
itself, — what is that ? — that dull red glow that 
shines behind the stained-glass windows, turning 
them to crimson ? that fork of flame that breaks 
now from the casement and flashes upward, along 
138 



The Beacon on the Hill 

the wood — and see — that sudden sheet of fire 
that springs the windows of the church with the 
roar of spHntered glass and surges upward into 
the sky, till the dark night and the bare trees 
and sleeping street of Mariposa are all illumined 
with its glow ! 

Fire ! Fire ! and the sudden sound of the bell 
now, breaking upon the night. 

So stood the Dean erect, with one hand pressed 
against the table for support, while the Mariposa 
fire bell struck out its warning to the sleeping 
town, — stood there while the street grew loud 
with the tumult of voices, — with the roaring gallop 
of the fire brigade, — with the harsh note of the 
gong — and over all other sounds, the great seething 
of the flames that tore their way into the beams 
and rafters of the pointed church and flared above 
it like a torch into the midnight sky. 

So stood the Dean, and as the church broke 
thus into a very beacon kindled upon a hill, — 
sank forward without a sign, his face against the 
table, stricken. 

You need to see a fire in a place such as Mari- 
posa, a town still half of wood, to know what fire 
means. In the city it is all different. To the 
onlooker, at any rate, a fire is only a spectacle, 
nothing more. Everything is arranged, organized, 
certain. It is only once perhaps in a century 

139 



Sunshine Sketches 



that fire comes to a large city as it comes to the 
little wooden town like Mariposa as a great 
Terror of the Night. 

That, at any rate, is what it meant in Mariposa 
that night in April, the night the Church of 
England Church burnt down. Had the fire 
gained but a hundred feet, or less, it could have 
reached from the driving shed behind the church 
to the backs of the wooden shops of the Main 
Street, and once there not all the waters of Lake 
Wissanotti could stay the course of its destruc- 
tion. It was for that hundred feet that they fought, 
the men of Mariposa, from the midnight call of 
the bell till the slow coming of the day. 

They fought the fire, not to save the church, 
for that was doomed from the first outbreak of 
the flames, but to stop the spread of it and save 
the town. They fought it at the windows, and 
at the blazing doors, and through the yawning 
furnace of the open belfry ; fought it, with the 
Mariposa engine thumping and panting in the 
street, itself aglow with fire like a servant demon 
fighting its own kind, with tall ladders reaching 
to the very roof, and with hose that poured their 
streams of tossing water foaming into the flames. 

Most of all they fought to save the wooden 

driving shed behind the church from which the 

fire could leap into the heart of Mariposa. That 

was where the real fight was, for the life of the 

140 



^ 



The Beacon on the Hill 

town. I wish you could have seen how they 
turned the hose against the shingles, ripping and 
tearing them from their places with the force 
of the driven water : how they mounted on the 
roof, axe in hand, and cut madly at the rafters to 
bring the building down, while the black clouds 
of smoke rolled in volumes about the men as they 
worked. You could see the fire horses harnessed 
with logging chains to the uprights of the shed 
to tear the building from its place. 

Most of all I wish you could have seen Mr. 
Smith, proprietor, as I think you know, of Smith's 
Hotel, there on the roof with a fireman's helmet 
on, cutting through the main beam of solid cedar, 
twelve by twelve, that held tight still when the 
rafters and the roof tree were down already, the 
shed on fire in a dozen places, and the other men 
driven from the work by the flaming sparks, and 
by the strangle of the smoke. Not so Mr. Smith ! 
See him there as he plants himself firm at the 
angle of the beams and with the full impact of 
his two hundred and eighty pounds drives his 
axe into the wood ! I tell you it takes a man 
from the pine country of the north to handle an 
axe ! Right, left, left, right, down it comes, 
with never a pause or stay, never missing by a 
fraction of an inch the line of the stroke ! At it 
Smith ! Down with it ! Till with a shout from 
the crowd the beam gapes asunder, and Mr. 
141 



Sunshine Sketches 



Smith is on the ground again, roaring his directions 
to the men and horses as they haul down the shed 
in a voice that dominates the fire itself. 

Who made Mr. Smith the head and chief of the 
Mariposa fire brigade that night, I cannot say. 
I do not know even where he got the huge red 
helmet that he wore, nor had I ever heard till the 
night the church burnt down that Mr. Smith was 
a member of the fire brigade at all. But it's 
always that way. Your little narrow-chested 
men may plan and organize, but when there is 
something to be done, something real, then it's 
the man of size and weight that steps to the front 
every time. Look at Bismarck and Mr. Gladstone 
and President Taft and Mr. Smith, — the same 
thing in each case. 

I suppose it was perfectly natural that just as 
soon as Mr. Smith came on the scene he put on 
somebody's helmet and shouted his directions 
to the men and bossed the Mariposa fire brigade 
like Bismarck with the German parliament. 

The fire had broken out late, late at night, and 
they fought it till the day. The flame of it lit 
up the town and the bare grey maple trees, and 
you could see in the light of it the broad sheet 
of the frozen lake, snow covered still. It kindled 
such a beacon as it burned that from the other 
side of the lake the people on the night express 
from the north could see it twenty miles away. 
142 



The Beacon on the Hill 

It lit up such a testimony of flame that Mariposa has 
never seen the like of it before or since. Then when 
the roof crashed in and the tall steeple tottered 
and fell, so swift a darkness seemed to come that 
the grey trees and the frozen lake vanished in a 
moment as if blotted out of existence. 

When the morning came the great church of 
Mariposa was nothing but a ragged group of 
walls with a sodden heap of bricks and blackened 
wood, still hissing here and there beneath the 
hose with the sullen anger of a conquered 
fire. 

Round the ruins of the fire walked the people 
of Mariposa next morning, and they pointed out 
where the wreck of the steeple had fallen, and 
where the bells of the church lay in a molten heap 
among the bricks, and they talked of the loss that 
it was and how many dollars it would take to 
rebuild the church, and whether it was insured 
and for how much. And there were at least 
fourteen people who had seen the fire first, and 
more than that who had given the first alarm, 
and ever so many who knew how fires of this sort 
could be prevented. 

Most noticeable of all you could see the sidesmen 
and the wardens and Mullins, the chairman of 
the vestry, talking in little groups about the 
fire. Later in the day there came from the city 

H3 



Sunshine Sketches 



the insurance men and the fire appraisers, and 
they too walked about the ruins, and talked with 
the wardens and the vestry men. There was 
such a luxury of excitement in the town that day 
that it was just as good as a public holiday. 

But the strangest part of it was the unexpected 
sequel. I don't know through what error of the 
Dean's figures it happened, through what lack of 
mathematical training the thing turned out as it 
did. No doubt the memory of the mathematical 
professor was heavily to blame for it, but the 
solid fact is that the Church of England Church 
of Mariposa turned out to be insured for a hundred 
thousand, and there were the receipts and the 
vouchers, all signed and regular, just as they 
found them in a drawer of the rector's study. 
There was no doubt about it. The insurance 
people might protest as they liked. The straight, 
plain fact was that the church was insured for 
about twice the whole amount of the cost and the 
debt and the rector's salary and the boarding-school 
fees of the littlest of the Drones all put together. 

There was a Whirlwind Campaign for you ! Talk 
of raising money, — that was something like ! I 
wonder if the universities and the city institu- 
tions that go round trying to raise money by the 
slow and painful method called a Whirlwind 
Campaign, that takes perhaps all day to raise 

H4 



The Beacon on the Hill 

fifty thousand dollars, ever thought of anything 
so beautifully simple as this. 

The Greater Testimony that had lain so 
heavily on the congregation went flaming to its 
end, and burned up its debts and its obligations 
and enriched its worshippers by its destruction. 
Talk of a beacon on a hill ! You can hardly beat 
that one. 

I wish you could have seen how the wardens 
and the sidesmen and MuUins, the chairman 
of the vestry, smiled and chuckled at the thought 
of it. Hadn't they said all along that all that was 
needed was a little faith and effort ? And here 
it was, just as they said, and they'd been right 
after all. 

Protest from the insurance people ? Legal 
proceedings to prevent payment ? My dear sir ! 
I see you know nothing about the Mariposa court, 
in spite of the fact that I have already said that 
it was one of the most precise instruments of 
British fair play ever established. Why, Judge 
Pepperleigh disposed of the case and dismissed 
the protest of the company in less than fifteen 
minutes ! Just what the jurisdiction of Judge 
Pepperleigh's court is I don't know, but I do know 
that in upholding the rights of a Christian con- 
gregation — I am quoting here the text of the 
decision — against the intrigues of a set of infernal 
skunks that make too much money, anyway, the 

H5 L 



Sunshine Sketches 



Mariposa court is without an equal. Pepperleigh 
even threatened the plaintiffs with the peni- 
tentiary, or worse. 

How the fire started no one ever knew. There 
was a queer story that went about to the effect that 
Mr. Smith and Mr. Gingham's assistant had been 
seen very late that night carrying an automobile 
can of kerosene up the street. But that was amply 
disproved by the proceedings of the court, and by 
the evidence of Mr. Smith himself. He took his 
dying oath, — not his ordinary one as used in the 
License cases, but his dying one, — that he had not 
carried a can of kerosene up the street, and that 
anyway it was the rottenest kind of kerosene 
he had ever seen and no more use than so much 
molasses. So that point was settled. 

Dean Drone ? Did he get well again ? Why,- 
what makes you ask that ? You mean, was his 
head at all affected after the stroke ? No, it 
was not. Absolutely not. It was not affected 
in the least, though how anybody who knows him 
now in Mariposa could have the faintest idea that 
his mind was in any way impaired by the stroke 
is more than I can tell. The engaging of Mr. 
Uttermost, the curate, whom perhaps you have 
heard preach in the new church, had nothing 
whatever to do with Dean Drone's head. It was 
merely a case of the pressure of overwork. It 
was felt very generally by the wardens that, in 
146 



The Beacon on the Hill 

these days of specialization, the rector was 
covering too wide a field, and that if he should 
abandon some of the lesser duties of his office, 
he might devote his energies more intently to 
the Infant Class. That was all. You may hear 
him there any afternoon, talking to them, if 
you will stand under the maple trees and listen 
through the open windows of the new Infant 
School. 

And, as for audiences, for intelligence, for 
attention — well, if I want to find listeners who can 
hear and understand about the great spaces of 
Lake Huron, let me tell of it, every time face to 
face with the blue eyes of the Infant Class, fresh 
from the infinity of spaces greater still. Talk 
of grown-up people all you like, but for listeners 
let me have the Infant Class with their pinafores 
and their Teddy Bears and their feet not even 
touching the floor, and Mr. Uttermost may preach 
to his heart's content of the newer forms of doubt 
revealed by the higher criticism. 

So you will understand that the Dean's mind, 
is, if anything, even keener, and his head even 
clearer than before. And if you want proof of 
it, notice him there beneath the plum blossoms 
reading in the Greek : he has told me that he 
finds that he can read, with the greatest ease, 
works in the Greek that seemed difiicult before. 
Because his head is so clear now. 

H7 



Sunshine Sketches 



And sometimes, — when his head is very clear, — 
as he sits there reading beneath the plum blossoms, 
he can hear them singing beyond, and his wife's 
voice. 



148 



Chapter VII 

The Extraordinary Entangle- 

ment of Mr. Pupkin 

JUDGE PEPPERLEIGH lived in a big house 
with hardwood floors and a wide piazza 
that looked over the lake from the top of 
Oneida Street. 

Every day about half-past five he used to come 
home from his office in the Mariposa Court House. 
On some days as he got near the house he would 
call out to his wife : 

"Almighty Moses, Martha! who left the 
sprinkler on the grass ? " 

On other days he would call to her from quite 
a little distance off: " Hullo, mother ! Got any 
supper for a hungry man ? " 

And Mrs. Pepperleigh never knew which it 
would be. 

On the days when he swore at the sprinkler 
you could see his spectacles flash like dynamite. 
But on the days when he called : " Hullo, mother," 
they were simply irradiated with kindliness. 

Some days, I say, he would cry out with a 
perfect whine of indignation : " Suffering Caesar ! 

149 



Sunshine Sketches 



has that infernal dog torn up those geraniums 
again ? " And other days you would hear him 
singing out : " Hullo, Rover! Well, doggie, well, 
old fellow ! " 

In the same way at breakfast, the judge, as 
he looked over the morning paper, would some- 
times leap to his feet with a perfect howl of suffer- 
ing, and cry : ** Everlasting Moses ! the Liberals 
have carried East Elgin." Or else he would lean 
back from the breakfast table with the most good- 
humoured laugh you ever heard and say : " Ha ! 
ha ! the Conservatives have carried South 
Norfolk." 

And yet he was perfectly logical, when you 
come to think of it. After all, what is more 
annoying to a sensitive, highly-strung man than 
an infernal sprinkler playing all over the place, 
and what more agreeable to a good-natured, even- 
tempered fellow than a well-prepared supper ? 
Or, what is more likeable than one's good, old, 
affectionate dog bounding down the path from sheer 
delight at seeing you, — or more execrable than 
an infernal whelp that has torn up the geraniums 
and is too old to keep, anyway ? 

As for politics, well, it all seemed reasonable 
enough. When the Conservatives got in any- 
where, Pepperleigh laughed and enjoyed it, 
simply because it does one good to see a straight, 
fine honest fight where the best man wins. When 

150 



The Entanglement of Mr. Pnpkin 

a Liberal got in, it made him mad, and he said 
so, — not, mind you, from any poUtical bias, for 
his office forbid it, — but simply because one can't 
bear to see the country go absolutely to the 
devil. 

I suppose, too, it was partly the effect of sitting 
in court all day listening to cases. One gets what 
you might call the judicial temper of mind. 
Pepperleigh had it so strongly developed that 
I've seen him kick a hydrangea pot to pieces with 
his foot because the accursed thing wouldn't 
flower. He once threw the canary cage clear 
into the lilac bushes because the " blasted bird 
wouldn't stop singing." It was a straight case 
of judicial temper. Lots of judges have it, 
developed in just the same broad, all-round way 
as with Judge Pepperleigh. 

I think it must be passing sentences that does 
it. Anyway, Pepperleigh had the aptitude 
for passing sentences so highly perfected 
that he spent his whole time at it inside of 
court and out. I've heard him hand out 
sentences for the Sultan of Turkey and Mrs. 
Pankhurst and the Emperor of Germany that 
made one's blood run cold. He would sit there 
on the piazza of a summer evening reading the 
paper, with dynamite sparks flying from his 
spectacles as he sentenced the Czar of Russia to 

151 



Sunshine ST^etches 



ten years in the salt mines — and made it fifteen 
a few minutes afterwards. Pepperleigh always 
read the foreign news — the news of things that 
he couldn't alter — as a form of wild and stimu- 
lating torment. 

So you can imagine that in some ways the 
judge's house was a pretty difficult house to go 
to. I mean you can see how awfully hard it 
must have been for Mr. Pupkin. I tell you it 
took some nerve to step up on that piazza and 
say, in a perfectly natural, off-hand way : " Oh, 
how do you do, judge ? Is Miss Zena in ? No, 
I won't stay, thanks ; I think I ought to be going. 
I simply called." A man who can do that has 
got to have a pretty fair amount of savoir what 
do you call it, and he's got to be mighty well 
shaved and have his cameo pin put in his tie at 
a pretty undeniable angle before he can tackle 
it. Yes, and even then he may need to hang 
round behind the lilac bushes for half an hour 
first, and cool off. And he's apt to make pretty 
good time down Oneida Street on the way back. 

Still, that's what you call love, and if you've 
got it, and are well shaved, and your boots well 
blacked, you can do things that seem almost 
impossible. Yes, you can do anything, even if 
you do trip over the dog in getting off the piazza. 

Don't suppose for a moment that Judge Pepper- 
leigh was an unapproachable, or a harsh man 
152 



The Entanglement of Mr. PupMn 

always and to everybody. Even Mr. Pupkin 
had to admit that that couldn't be so. To know 
that, you had only to see Zena Pepperleigh put 
her arm round his neck and call him Daddy. 
She would do that even when there were two or 
three young men sitting on the edge of the 
piazza. You know, I think, the way they sit on 
the edge in Mariposa. It is meant to indicate 
what part of the family they have come to see. 
Thus when George Duff, the bank manager, came 
up to the Pepperleigh house, he always sat in a 
chair on the verandah and talked to the judge. 
But when Pupkin or Mallory Tompkins or any 
fellow like that came, he sat down in a sidelong 
fashion on the edge of the boards and then they 
knew exactly what he was there for. If he knew 
the house well, he leaned his back against the 
verandah post and smoked a cigarette. But that 
took nerve. 

But I am afraid that this is a digression, and, of 
course, you know all about it just as well as I 
do. All that I was trying to say was that I 
don't suppose that the judge had ever spoken a 
cross word to Zena in his life. — Oh, he threw her 
novel over the grape-vine, I don't deny that, but 
then why on earth should a girl read trash like 
the Errant Quest of the Palladin Pilgrim, and 
the Life of Sir Galahad, when the house was 
full of good reading like The Life of Sir John 

153 



Sunshine Sketches 



A. Macdonald, and Pioneer Days in Tecumseh 
Township ? 

Still, what I mean is that the judge never 
spoke harshly to Zena, except perhaps under 
extreme provocation ; and I am quite sure 
that he never, never had to Neil. But then 
what father ever would want to speak angrily 
to such a boy as Neil Pepperleigh ? The judge 
took no credit to himself for that ; the finest 
grown boy in the whole county and so broad and 
big that they took him into the Missinaba Horse 
when he was only seventeen. And clever, — so 
clever that he didn't need to study ; so clever that 
he used to come out at the foot of the class in 
mathematics at the Mariposa high school through 
sheer surplus of brain powder. I've heard the 
judge explain it a dozen times. Why, Neil was 
so clever that he used to be able to play billiards 
at the Mariposa House all evening when the other 
boys had to stay at home and study. 

Such a powerful looking fellow, too ! Every- 
body in Mariposa remembers how Neil Pepper- 
leigh smashed in the face of Peter McGinnis, the 
Liberal organizer, at the big election — you recall 
it — when the old Macdonald Government went 
out. Judge Pepperleigh had to try him for it 
the next morning — his own son. They say there 
never was such a scene even in the Mariposa 

154 



The Entanglement of Mr. Pupkin 

court. There was, I believe, something like it 
on a smaller scale in Roman history, but it wasn't 
half as dramatic. I remember Judge Pepperleigh 
leaning forward to pass the sentence, — for a judge 
is bound, you know, by his oath, — and how grave 
he looked and yet so proud and happy, like a 
man doing his duty and sustained by it, and he 
said : 

" My boy, you are innocent. You smashed in 
Peter McGinnis's face, but you did it without 
criminal intent. You put a face on him, by 
Jehoshaphat ! that he won't lose for six months, 
but you did it without evil purpose or malign 
design. My boy, look up ! Give me your hand ! 
You leave this court without a stain upon your 
name." 

They said it was one of the most moving scenes 
ever enacted in the Mariposa Court. 

But the strangest thing is that if the judge 
had known what every one else in Mariposa 
knew, it would have broken his heart. If 
he could have seen Neil with the drunken 
flush on his face in the billiard room of the 
Mariposa House, — if he had known, as every 
one else did, that Neil was crazed with drink the 
night he struck the Liberal organizer when the old 
Macdonald Government went out — if he could 
have known that even on that last day Neil 

^55 



Sunshine Sketches 



was drunk when he rode with the Missinaba Horse 
to the station to join the Third Contingent for 
the war, and all the street of the little town was 
one great roar of people, 

But the judge never knew, and now he never 
will. For if you could find it in the meanness of 
your soul to tell him, it would serve no purpose 
now except to break his heart, and there would 
rise up to rebuke you the pictured vision of an 
untended grave somewhere in the great silences 
of South Africa. 

Did I say above, or seem to imply, that the judge 
sometimes spoke harshly to his wife ? Or did you 
gather for a minute that her lot was one to lament 
over or feel sorry for ? If so, it just shows that 
you know nothing about such things, and that mar- 
riage, at least as it exists in Mariposa, is a sealed 
book to you. You are as ignorant as Miss Spiff- 
kins, the biology teacher at the high school, 
who always says how sorry she is for Mrs. Pepper- 
leigh. You get that impression simply because 
the judge howled like an Algonquin Indian 
when he saw the sprinkler running on the lawn. 
But are you sure you know the other side of it ? 
Are you quite sure when you talk like Miss 
Spiffkins does about the rights of it, that you are 
taking all things into account ? You might have 
thought differently perhaps of the Pepperleighs 
anyway, if you had been there that evening when 
136 



The Entanglement of Mr. Puphin 

the judge came home to his wife with one hand 
pressed to his temple and in the other the cable- 
gram that said that Neil had been killed in action 
in South Africa. That night they sat together 
with her hand in his, just as they had sat together 
thirty years ago when he was a law student in 
the city. 

Go and tell Miss Spiffkins that ! Hydrangeas, — 
canaries — temper, — blazes ! What does Miss 
Spiffkins know about it all ? 

But in any case if you tried to tell Judge Pepper- 
leigh about Neil now, he wouldn't believe it. 
He'd laugh it to scorn. That is Neil's picture, 
in uniform, hanging in the dining-room beside 
the Fathers of Confederation. That military 
looking man in the picture beside him is General 
Kitchener, whom you may perhaps have heard of, 
for he was very highly spoken of in Neil's letters. 
All round the room, in fact, and still more in the 
judge's library upstairs, you will see pictures of 
South Africa and the departure of the Canadians 
(there are none of the return), and of Mounted 
Infantry and of Unmounted Cavalry and a lot 
of things that only soldiers and the fathers of 
soldiers know about. 

So you can realize that for a fellow who isn't 
military, and who wears nothing nearer to a 
uniform than a daffodil tennis blazer, the judge's 
house is a devil of a house to come to. 

137 



Siinshiiie Sketches 



I think you remember young Mr. Pupkin, do 
you not ? I have referred to him several times 
already as the junior teller in the Exchange Bank. 
But if you know Mariposa at all, you have often 
seen him. You have noticed him, I am sure, 
going for the bank mail in the morning in an 
office suit effect of clinging grey with a gold neck- 
tie pin shaped like a riding whip. You have seen 
him often enough going down to the lake front 
after supper, in tennis things, smoking a cigarette 
and with a paddle and a crimson canoe cushion 
under his arm. You have seen him entering 
Dean Drone's church in a top hat and a long 
frock coat nearly to his feet. You have seen him, 
perhaps, playing poker in Peter Glover's room 
over the hardware store, and trying to look as 
if he didn't hold three aces, — in fact, giving 
absolutely no sign of it beyond the wild flush in 
his face and the fact that his hair stands on 
end. 

That kind of reticence is a thing you simply 
have to learn in banking. I mean, if you've got 
to be in a position where you know for a fact that 
the Mariposa Packing Company's account is 
overdrawn by sixty-four dollars and yet daren't 
say anything about it, not even to the girls that 
you play tennis with, — I don't say, not a casual 
hint as a reference, but not really tell them, not 
for instance bring down the bank ledger to the 
158 



The Entanglement of Mr. PupUn 

tennis court and show them, — you learn a sort of 
reticence and self-control that people outside of 
banking circles never can attain. 

Why, I've known Pupkin at the Firemen's 
Ball lean against the wall in his dress suit and 
talk away to Jim Eliot, the druggist, without 
giving the faintest hint or indication that Eliot's 
note for twenty-seven dollars had been protested 
that very morning. Not a hint of it. I don't 
say he didn't mention it, in a sort of way, in the 
supper room, just to one or two, but I mean there 
was nothing in the way he leant up against the 
wall to suggest it. 

But, however, I don't mention that as either 
for or against Mr. Pupkin. That sort of thing 
is merely the A B C of banking, as he himself 
told me when explaining why it was that he 
hesitated to divulge the exact standing of the 
Mariposa Carriage Company. Of course, once 
you get past the ABC you can learn a lot that 
is mighty interesting. 

So I think that if you know Mariposa and under- 
stand even the rudiments of banking, you are 
perfectly acquainted with Mr. Pupkin. What ? 
You remember him as being in love with Miss 
Lawson, the high school teacher ? In love with 
HER ? What a ridiculous idea. You mean 
merely because on the night when the Mariposa 
Belle sank with every soul on board, Pupkin put 

159 



Sunshine Sketches 



off from the town in a skiff to rescue Miss Lawson. 
Oh, but you're quite wrong. That wasn't LOVE. 
I've heard Pupkin explain it himself a dozen times. 
That sort of thing, — paddling out to a sinking 
steamer at night in a crazy skiff, — may indicate 
a sort of attraction, but not real love, not what 
Pupkin came to feel afterwards. Indeed, when 
he began to think of it, it wasn't even attraction, 
it was merely respect, — that's all it was. And 
an3rvvay, that was long before, six or seven months 
back, and Pupkin admitted that at the time he 
was a mere boy. 

Mr. Pupkin, I must explain, lived with Mallory 
Tompkins in rooms over the Exchange Bank, on 
the very top floor, the third, with Mullins's own 
rooms below them. Extremely comfortable 
quarters they were, with two bedrooms and a 
sitting-room that was all fixed up with snow- 
shoes and tennis rackets on the walls and dance 
programmes and canoe club badges and all that 
sort of thing. 

Mallory Tompkins was a young man with 
long legs and check trousers who worked on the 
Mariposa Times-Herald. That was what gave 
him his literary taste. He used to read Ibsen 
and that other Dutch author — Bumstone Bum- 
stone, isn't it ? — and you can judge that he was a 
mighty intellectual fellow. He was so intellectual 
1 60 



The Entanglement of Mr. Pupkin 

that he was, as he himself admitted, a complete 
eggnostic. He and Pupkin used to have the most 
tremendous arguments about creation and evolu- 
tion, and how if you study at a school of applied 
science you learn that there's no hell beyond the 
present life. 

Mallory Tompkins used to prove absolutely that 
the miracles were only electricity, and Pupkin 
used to admit that it was an awfully good argu- 
ment, but claimed that he had heard it awfully 
well answered in a sermon, though unfortunately 
he had forgotten how. 

Tompkins used to show that the flood was 
contrary to geology, and Pupkin would acknow- 
ledge that the point was an excellent one, but that 
he had read a book, — the title of which he ought 
to have written down, — which explained geology 
away altogether. 

Mallory Tompkins generally got the best of 
the merely logical side of the arguments, but 
Pupkin — who was a tremendous Christian — was 
much stronger in the things he had forgotten. 
So the discussions often lasted till far into the 
night, and Mr. Pupkin would fall asleep and dream 
of a splendid argument, which would have settled 
the whole controversy, only unfortunately he 
couldn't recall it in the morning. 

Of course, Pupkin would never have thought of 
considering himself on an intellectual par with 

l6l M 



Sunshine Sketches 



Mallory Tompkins. That would have been ridicu- 
lous. Mallory Tompkins had read all sorts of 
things and had half a mind to write a novel 
himself — either that or a play. All he needed, 
he said, was to have a chance to get away some- 
where by himself and think. Every time he 
went away to the city Pupkin expected that he 
might return with the novel all finished ; but 
though he often came back with his eyes red from 
thinking, the novel as yet remained incomplete. 
Meantime, Mallory Tompkins, as I say, was a 
mighty intellectual fellow. You could see that 
from the books on the bamboo bookshelves in the 
sitting-room. There was, for instance, the ** En- 
cyclopaedia Metropolit ana " in forty volumes, that 
he bought on the instalment plan for two dollars 
a month. Then when they took that away, there 
was the " History of Civilization,'' in fifty volrmies 
at fifty cents a week for fifty years. Tompkins 
had read in it half-way through the Stone Age 
before they took it from him. After that there 
was the " Lives of the Painters," one volume at 
a time — a splendid thing in which you could read 
all about Aahrens, and Aachenthal, and Aax and 
men of that class. After all, there's nothing like 
educating oneself. Mallory Tompkins knew about 
the opening period of all sorts of things, and in 
regard to people whose names began with " A " 
you couldn't stick him. 

162 



The Entanglement of Mr, Pupkin 

I don't mean that he and Mr. Pupkin lived a 
mere routine of studious evenings. That would 
be untrue. Quite often their time was spent in 
much less commendable ways than that, and there 
were poker parties in their sitting-room that 
didn't break up till nearly midnight. Card-play- 
ing, after all, is a slow business, unless you put 
money on it, and, besides, if you are in a bank 
and are handling money all day, gambling has a 
fascination. 

I've seen Pupkin and Mallory Tompkins and 
Joe Milligan, the dentist, and Mitchell the ticket 
agent, and the other " boys " sitting round the 
table with matches enough piled up in front of 
them to stock a factory. Ten matches counted 
for one chip and ten chips made a cent — so you 
see they weren't merely playing for the fun of the 
thing. Of course it's a hollow pleasure. You 
realize that when you wake up at night parched 
with thirst, ten thousand matches to the bad. 
But banking is a wild life and everybody 
knows it. 

Sometimes Pupkin would swear off and keep 
away from the cursed thing for weeks, and then 
perhaps he'd see by sheer accident a pile of 
matches on the table, or a match lying on the 
floor and it would start the craze in him. I am 
using his own words — a " craze " — that's what he 
called it when he told Miss Lawson all about it, 
163 



Sunshine Sketches 



and she promised to cure him of it. She would 
have, too. Only, as I say, Pupkin found that 
what he had mistaken for attraction was only 
respect. And there's no use worrying a woman 
that you respect about your crazes. 

It was from Mallory Tompkins that Pupkin 
learned all about the Mariposa people, because 
Pupkin came from away off — somewhere down 
in the Maritime Provinces — and didn't know a 
soul. Mallory Tompkins used to tell him about 
Judge Pepperleigh, and what a wonderfully 
clever man he was and how he would have been 
in the Supreme Court for certain if the Conservative 
Government had stayed in another fifteen or 
twenty years instead of coming to a premature 
end. He used to talk so much about the 
Pepperleighs, that Pupkin was sick of the very 
name. But just as soon as he had seen Zena 
Pepperleigh he couldn't hear enough of them. 
He would have talked with Tompkins for hours 
about the judge's dog Rover. And as for Zena, 
if he could have brought her name over his lips, 
he would have talked of her forever. 

He first saw her — by one of the strangest 
coincidences in the world — on the Main Street of 
Mariposa. If he hadn't happened to be going up 
the street and she to be coming down it, the thing 
wouldn't have happened. Afterwards they both 
164 



The Entanglement of Mr. Pupkin 

admitted that it was one of the most pecuHar 
coincidences they ever heard of. Pupkin owned 
that he had had the strangest feehng that morning 
as if something were going to happen — a feeHng 
not at all to be classed with the one of which he 
had once spoken to Miss Lawson, and which was, 
at the most, a mere anticipation of respect. 

But, as I say, Pupkin met Zena Pepperleigh 
on the 26th of June, at twenty-five minutes to 
eleven. And at once the whole world changed. 
The past was all blotted out. Even in the new 
forty volume edition of the " Instalment Record 
of Humanity " that Mallory Tompkins had 
just received — Pupkin wouldn't have bothered 
with it. 

She — that word henceforth meant Zena — had 
just come back from her boarding-school, and of 
all times of year coming back from a boarding- 
school and for wearing a white shirt waist and 
a crimson tie and for carrying a tennis racket on 
the stricken street of a town — commend me to 
the month of June in Mariposa. 

And, for Pupkin, straight away the whole town 
was irradiated with sunshine, and there was such 
a singing of the birds, and such a dancing of the 
rippled waters of the lake, and such a kindliness 
in the faces of all the people, that only those who 
have lived in Mariposa, and been young there, 
can know at all what he felt. 

165 



Sunshine Sketches 



The simple fact is that just the moment he 
saw Zena Pepperleigh, Mr. Pupkin was clean, 
plumb, straight, flat, absolutely in love with her. 

Which fact is so important that it would be 
folly not to close the chapter and think about it. 



1 66 



Chapter VIII 

The Fore -ordained Attachment 

of Zena Pepperleigh and 

Peter Pupkin 

ZENA PEPPERLEIGH used to sit reading 
novels on the piazza of the judge's house, 
half hidden by the Virginia creepers. 
At times the book would fall upon her lap and 
there was such a look of unstilled yearning in her 
violet eyes that it did not entirely disappear even 
when she picked up the apple that lay beside her 
and took another bite out of it. 

With hands clasped she would sit there dream- 
ing all the beautiful day-dreams of girlhood. 
When you saw that far-away look in her eyes, it 
meant that she was dreaming that a plumed and 
armoured knight was rescuing her from the em- 
battled keep of a castle beside the Danube. At 
other times she was being borne away by an 
Algerian corsair over the blue waters of the 
Mediterranean and was reaching out her arms 
towards France to say farewell to it. 

Sometimes when you noticed a sweet look of 
resignation that seemed to rest upon her features, 
it meant that Lord Ronald de Chevereux was 

167 



Sunshine Sketches 



kneeling at her feet, and that she was telling him 
to rise that her humbler birth must ever be a 
bar to their happiness and Lord Ronald was 
getting into an awful state about it, as English 
peers do at the least suggestion of anything of 
the sort. 

Or, if it wasn't that, then her lover had just 
returned to her side, tall and soldierly and sun- 
burned, after fighting for ten years in the Soudan 
for her sake, and had come back to ask her for 
her answer and to tell her that for ten years her 
face had been with him even in the watches of the 
night. He was asking her for a sign, any kind 
of sign, — ten years in the Soudan entitles them to 
a sign, — and Zena was plucking a white rose, 
just one, from her hair, when she would hear her 
father's step on the piazza and make a grab for 
the Pioneers of Tecumseh Townships, and start 
reading it like mad. 

She was always, as I say, being rescued and 
being borne away, and being parted, and reaching 
out her arms to France and to Spain, and saying 
good-bye forever to Valladolid or the old grey 
towers of Hohenbranntwein. 

And I don't mean that she was in the least 
exceptional or romantic, because all the girls in 
Mariposa were just like that. An Algerian corsair 
could have come into the town and had a dozen 
of them for the asking, and as for a wounded 
1 68 



Zena Pepperleigh 



English officer, — well, perhaps it's better not to 
talk about it outside or the little town would 
become a regular military hospital. 

Because, mind you, the Mariposa girls are all 
right. You've only to look at them to realize 
that. You see, you can get in Mariposa a print 
dress of pale blue or pale pink for a dollar twenty 
that looks infinitely better than anything you 
ever see in the city, — especially if you can wear 
with it a broad straw hat and a background of 
maple trees and the green grass of a tennis court. 
And if you remember, too, that these are culti- 
vated girls who have all been to the Mariposa 
high school and can do decimal fractions, you 
will understand that an Algerian corsair would 
sharpen his scimitar at the very sight of them. 

Don't think either that they are all dying to 
get married ; because they are not. I don't say 
they wouldn't take an errant knight, or a buc- 
caneer or a Hungarian refugee, but for the ordinary 
marriages of ordinary people they feel nothing 
but a pitying disdain. So it is that each one of 
them in due time marries an enchanted prince 
and goes to live in one of the little enchanted 
houses in the lower part of the town. 

I don't know whether you know it, but you 

can rent an enchanted house in Mariposa for eight 

dollars a month, and some of the most completely 

enchanted are the cheapest. As for the enchanted 

169 



Sunshine Sketches 



princes, they find them in the strangest places, 
where you never expected to see them, working — 
under a spell, you understand, — in drug-stores and 
printing offices, and even selling things in shops. 
But to be able to find them you have first to read 
ever so many novels about Sir Galahad and the 
Errant Quest and that sort of thing. 

Naturally then Zena Pepperleigh, as she sat 
on the piazza, dreamed of bandits and of wounded 
officers and of Lord Ronalds riding on foam- 
flecked chargers. But that she ever dreamed of 
a junior bank teller in a daffodil blazer riding 
past on a bicycle, is pretty hard to imagine. 
So, when Mr. Pupkin came tearing past up the 
slope of Oneida Street at a speed that proved 
that he wasn't riding there merely to pass the 
house, I don't suppose that Zena Pepperleigh 
was aware of his existence. 

That may be a slight exaggeration. She knew, 
perhaps, that he was the new junior teller in the 
Exchange Bank and that he came from the 
Maritime Provinces, and that nobody knew who 
his people were, and that he had never been in a 
canoe in his life till he came to Mariposa, and that 
he sat four pews back in Dean Drone's church, 
and that his salary was eight hundred dollars. 
Beyond that, she didn't know a thing about. him. 
She presumed, however, that the reason why he 
170 



Zena Pepijeiieigh 



went past so fast was because he didn't dare to go 
slow. 

This, of course, was perfectly correct. Ever 
since the day when Mr. Pupkin met Zena in the 
Main Street he used to come past the house on his 
bicycle just after bank hours. He would have 
gone past twenty times a day but he was afraid 
to. As he came up Oneida Street, he used to 
pedal faster and faster, — he never meant to, but 
he couldn't help it, — till he went past the piazza 
where Zena was sitting at an awful speed with his 
little yellow blazer flying in the wind. In a second 
he had disappeared in a buzz and a cloud of dust, 
and the momentum of it carried him clear out into 
the country for miles and miles before he ever 
dared to pause or look back. 

Then Mr. Pupkin would ride in a huge circuit 
about the country, trying to think he was looking 
at the crops, and sooner or later his bicycle would 
be turned towards the town again and headed for 
Oneida Street, and would get going quicker and 
quicker and quicker, till the pedals whirled round 
with a buzz and he came past the judge's house 
again, like a bullet out of a gun. He rode fifteen 
miles to pass the house twice, and even then it 
took all the nerve that he had. 

The people on Oneida Street thought that Mr. 
Pupkin was crazy, but Zena Pepperleigh knew 
that he was not. Already, you see, there was a 
171 



Sunshine Sketches 



sort of dim parallel between the passing of the 
bicycle and the last ride of Tancred the Inconsol- 
able along the banks of the Danube. 

I have already mentioned, I think, how Mr. 
Pupkin and Zena Pepperleigh first came to know 
one another. Like everything else about them, 
it was a sheer matter of coincidence, quite inex- 
plicable unless you understand that these things 
are foreordained. 

That, of course, is the way with foreordained 
affairs and that's where they differ from ordinary 
love. 

I won't even try to describe how Mr. Pupkin 
felt when he first spoke with Zena and sat 
beside her as they copied out the " endless 
chain " letter asking for ten cents. They wrote 
out, as I said, no less than eight of the letters 
between them, and they found out that their 
handwritings were so alike that you could hardly 
tell them apart, except that Pupkin 's letters were 
round and Zena's letters were pointed and 
Pupkin wrote straight up and down and Zena 
wrote on a slant. Beyond that the writing was 
so alike that it was the strangest coincidence in 
the world. Of course when they made figures it 
was different and Pupkin explained to Zena that 
in the bank you have to be able to make a seven 
so that it doesn't look like a nine. 
172 



Zena Pepperleigh 



So, as I say, they wrote the letters all afternoon 
and when it was over they walked up Oneida 
Street together, ever so slowly. When they got 
near the house, Zena asked Pupkin to come in to 
tea, with such an easy off-hand way that you 
couldn't have told that she was half an hour late 
and was taking awful chances on the judge. 
Pupkin hadn't had time to say yes before the 
judge appeared at the door, just as they were 
stepping up on to the piazza, and he had a table 
napkin in his hand and the dynamite sparks 
were flying from his spectacles as he called out : 

" Great heaven ! Zena, why in everlasting 
blazes can't you get in to tea at a Christian 
hour ? " 

Zena gave one look of appeal to Pupkin, and 
Pupkin looked one glance of comprehension, and 
turned and fled down Oneida Street. And if the 
scene wasn't quite as dramatic as the renunciation 
of Tancred the Troubadour, it at least had some- 
thing of the same elements in it. 

Pupkin walked home to his supper at the Mari- 
posa House on air, and that evening there was a 
gentle distance in his manner towards Sadie, the 
dining-room girl, that I suppose no bank clerk in 
Mariposa ever showed before. It was like Sir 
Galahad talking with the tire-women of Queen 
Guinevere and receiving huckleberry pie at their 
hands. 

173 



Sunshine Sketches 



After that Mr. Pupkin and Zena Pepperleigh 
constantly met together. They played tennis as 
partners on the grass court behind Dr. Gallagher's 
house, — the Mariposa Tennis Club rent it, you 
remember, for fifty cents a month, — and Pupkin 
used to perform perfect prodigies of valour, 
leaping in the air to serve with his little body 
hooked like a letter S. Sometimes, too, they 
went out on Lake Wissanotti in the evening in 
Pupkin's canoe, with Zena sitting in the bow and 
Pupkin paddling in the stern and they went out 
ever so far and it was after dark and the stars 
were shining before they came home. Zena 
would look at the stars and say how infinitely far 
away they seemed, and Pupkin would realize that 
a girl with a mind like that couldn't have any use 
for a fool such as he. Zena used to ask him to 
point out the Pleiades and Jupiter and Ursa minor, 
and Pupkin showed her exactly where they were. 
That impressed them both tremendously because 
Pupkin didn't know that Zena remembered the 
names out of the astronomy book at her boarding- 
school, and Zena didn't know that Pupkin simply 
took a chance on where the stars were. 

And ever so many times they talked so inti- 
mately that Pupkin came mighty near telling 
her about his home in the Maritime Provinces and 
about his father and mother, and then kicked 
himself that he hadn't the manliness to speak 

174 



Zena Peppeiieigh 



straight out about it and take the consequences. 
Please don't imagine from any of this that the 
course of Mr. Pupkin's love ran smooth. On 
the contrary, Pupkin himself felt that it was 
absolutely hopeless from the start. 

There were, it might be admitted, certain things 
that seemed to indicate progress. 

In the course of the months of June and July 
and August, he had taken Zena out in his canoe 
thirty-one times. Allowing an average of two 
miles for each evening, Pupkin had paddled Zena 
sixty- two miles, or more than a hundred thousand 
yards. That surely was something. 

He had played tennis with her on sixteen after- 
noons. Three times he had left his tennis racket 
up at the judge's house in Zena's charge, and once 
he had, with her full consent, left his bicycle there 
all night. This must count for something. No 
girl could trifle with a man to the extent of having 
his bicycle leaning against the verandah post all 
night and mean nothing by it. 

More than that — he had been to tea at the 
judge's house fourteen times, and seven times he 
had been asked by Lilian Drone to the rectory 
when Zena was coming, and five times by Nora 
Gallagher to tea at the doctor's house because 
Zena was there. 

Altogether he had eaten so many meals where 
Z-ena was that his meal ticket at the Mariposa 

^75 



Sunshine Sketches 



lasted nearly double its proper time, and the face 
of Sadie, the dining-room girl, had grown to 
wear a look of melancholy resignation, sadder than 
romance. 

Still more than that, Pupkin had bought for 
Zena, reckoning it altogether, about two buckets 
of ice cream and perhaps half a bushel of choco- 
late. Not that Pupkin grudged the expense of 
it. On the contrary, over and above the ice cream 
and the chocolate he had bought her a white 
waistcoat and a walking stick with a gold top, a 
lot of new neckties and a pair of patent leather 
boots — that is, they were all bought on account 
of her, which is the same thing. 

Add to all this that Pupkin and Zena had been 
to the Church of England Church nearly every 
Sunday evening for two months, and one evening 
they had even gone to the Presbyterian Church 
" for fun," which, if you know Mariposa, you will 
realize to be a wild sort of escapade that ought to 
speak volumes. 

Yet in spite of this, Pupkin felt that the thing 
was hopeless : which only illustrates the dreadful 
ups and downs, the wild alternations of hope and 
despair that characterise an exceptional affair of 
this sort. 

Yes, it was hopeless. 

Every time that Pupkin watched Zena praying 
176 



Zena Pepperleigh 



in church, he knew that she was too good for him. 
Every time that he came to call for her and found 
her reading Browning and Omar Khayyam he 
knew that she was too clever for him. And every 
time that he saw her at all he realized that she 
was too beautiful for him. 

You see, Pupkin knew that he wasn't a hero. 
When Zena would clasp her hands and talk rap- 
turously about crusaders and soldiers and firemen 
and heroes generally, Pupkin knew just where he 
came in. Not in it, that was all. If a war could 
have broken out in Mariposa, or the judge's house 
been invaded by the Germans, he might have had 
a chance, but as it was — hopeless. 

Then there was Zena's father. Heaven knows 
Pupkin tried hard to please the judge. He 
agreed with every theory that Judge Pepperleigh 
advanced, and that took a pretty pliable intellect 
in itself. They denounced female suffrage one 
day and they favoured it the next. One day the 
judge would claim that the labour movement was 
eating out the heart of the country, and the next 
day he would hold that the hope of the world 
lay in the organization of the toiling masses. 
Pupkin shifted his opinions like the glass in a 
kaleidoscope. Indeed, the only things on which he 
was allowed to maintain a steadfast conviction were 
the, purity of the Conservative party of Canada 
and the awful wickedness of the recall of judges. 

177 N 



Sunshine Sketches 



But with all that the judge was hardly civil to 
Pupkin. He hadn't asked him to the house till 
Zena brought him there, though, as a rule, all the 
bank clerks in Mariposa treated Judge Pepper- 
leigh's premises as their own. He used to sit and 
sneer at Pupkin after he had gone till Zena would 
throw down the Pioneers of Tecumseh Town- 
ship in a temper and flounce off the piazza to 
her room. After which the judge's manner would 
change instantly and he would relight his corn 
cob pipe and sit and positively beam with con- 
tentment. In all of which there was something 
so mysterious as to prove that Mr. Pupkin 's 
chances were hopeless. 

Nor was that all of it. Pupkin 's salary was 
eight hundred dollars a year and the Exchange 
Bank limit for marriage was a thousand. 

I suppose you are aware of the grinding capital- 
istic tyranny of the banks in Mariposa whereby 
marriage is put beyond the reach of ever so many 
mature and experienced men of nineteen and 
twenty and twenty-one, who are compelled to go 
on eating on a meal ticket at the Mariposa House 
and living over the bank to suit the whim of a 
group of capitalists. 

Whenever Pupkin thought of this two hundred 

dollars he understood all that it meant by social 

unrest. In fact, he interpreted all forms of social 

discontent in terms of it. Russian Anarchism, 

178 



Ze7ia Pepperleigh 



German Socialism, the Labour Movement, Henry 
George, Lloyd George, — he understood the whole 
lot of them by thinking of his two hundred 
dollars. 

When I tell you that at this period Mr. Pupkin 
read Memoirs of the Great Revolutionists and 
even thought of blowing up Henry Mullins with 
dynamite, you can appreciate his state of mind. 

But not even by all these hindrances and 
obstacles to his love for Zena Pepperleigh would 
Peter Pupkin have been driven to commit 
suicide (oh, yes ; he committed it three times, 
as Lm going to tell you), had it not been for 
another thing that he knew stood once and for 
all and in cold reality between him and Zena. 

He felt it in a sort of way, as soon as he knew 
her. Each time that he tried to talk to her about 
his home and his father and mother and found 
that something held him back, he realized more 
and more the kind of thing that stood between 
them. Most of all did he realize it, with a sudden 
sickness of heart, when he got word that his 
father and mother wanted to come to Mariposa 
to see him and he had all he could do to head 
them off from it. 

Why ? Why stop them ? The reason was, 
simple enough, that Pupkin was ashamed of 
them, bitterly ashamed. The picture of his 

179 



Sunshine Sketches 



mother and father turning up in Mariposa and 
being seen by his friends there and going up to 
the Pepperleighs' house made him feel faint 
with shame. 

No, I don't say it wasn't wrong. It only 
shows what difference of fortune, the difference 
of being rich and being poor, means in this world. 
You perhaps have been so lucky that you cannot 
appreciate what it means to feel shame at the 
station of your own father and mother. You 
think it doesn't matter, that honesty and kind- 
liness of heart are all that counts. That only 
shows that you have never known some of the 
bitterest feelings of people less fortunate than 
yourself. 

So it was with Mr. Pupkin. When he thought 
of his father and mother turning up in Mariposa, 
his face reddened with unworthy shame. 

He could just picture the scene ! He could 
see them getting out of their Limousine touring 
car, with the chauffeur holding open the door for 
them, and his father asking for a suite of rooms, — 
just think of it, a suite of rooms ! — at the Mariposa 
House. 

The very thought of it turned him ill. 

What ! You have mistaken my meaning ? 

Ashamed of them because they were poor ? Good 

heavens, no, but because they were rich ! And 

not rich in the sense in which they use the term 

1 80 



Zena Pepperleigh 



in Mariposa, where a rich person merely means a 
man who has money enough to build a house with 
a piazza and to have everything he wants ; but 
rich in the other sense, — motor cars, Ritz hotels, 
steam yachts, summer islands and all that sort 
of thing. 

Why, Pupkin's father, — what's the use of 
trying to conceal it any longer ? — ^was the senior 
partner in the law firm of Pupkin, Pupkin and 
Pupkin. If you know the Maritime Provinces at 
all, youVe heard of the Pupkins. The name is a 
household word from Chedabucto to Chidabecto. 
And, for the matter of that, the law firm and the 
fact that Pupkin senior had been an Attorney 
General was the least part of it. Attorney 
General ! Why, there's no money in that ! It's 
no better than the Senate. No, no, Pupkin 
senior, like so many lawyers, was practically a 
promoter, and he blew companies like bubbles, 
and when he wasn't in the Maritime Provinces he 
was in Boston and New York raising money and 
floating loans, and when they had no money left 
in New York he floated it in London : and when 
he had it, he floated on top of it big rafts of lumber 
on the Miramichi and codfish on the Grand 
Banks and lesser fish in the Fundy Bay. You've 
heard perhaps of the Tidal Transportation Com- 
pany, and Fundy Fisheries Corporation, and the 
Paspebiac Pulp and Paper Unlimited ? Well, all 
i8i 



Sunshine Sketches 



of those were Pupkin senior under other names. 
So just imagine him in Mariposa ! Wouldn't 
he be utterly foolish there ? Just imagine him 
meeting Jim Eliot and treating him like a druggist 
merely because he ran a drug store ! or speaking 
to Jefferson Thorpe as if he were a barber simply 
because he shaved for money ! Why, a man like 
that could ruin young Pupkin in Mariposa in 
half a day, and Pupkin knew it. 

That wouldn't matter so much, but think of 
the Pepperleighs and Zena ! Everything would 
be over with them at once. Pupkin knew just 
what the judge thought of riches and luxuries. 
How often had he heard the judge pass sentences 
of life imprisonment on Pierpont Morgan and Mr. 
Rockefeller. How often had Pupkin heard him 
say that any man who received more than three 
thousand dollars a year (that was the judicial 
salary in the Missinaba district) was a mere robber, 
unfit to shake the hand of an honest man. Bitter ! 
I should think he was ! He was not so bitter, 
perhaps, as Mr. Muddleson, the principal of the 
Mariposa high school, who said that any man 
who received more than fifteen hundred dollars 
was a public enemy. He was certainly not so 
bitter as Trelawney, the post-master, who said 
that any man who got from society more than 
thirteen hundred dollars (apart from a legitimate 
increase in recognition of a successful election) 
182 



Zena Pepperleigh 



was a danger to society. Still, he was bitter. 
They all were in Mariposa. Pupkin could just 
imagine how they would despise his father ! 

And Zena ! That was the worst of all. How 
often had Pupkin heard her say that she simply 
hated diamonds, wouldn't wear them, despised 
them, wouldn't give a thank you for a whole 
tiara of them ! As for motor cars and steam 
yachts, — well, it was pretty plain that that sort 
of thing had no chance with Zena Pepperleigh. 
Why, she had told Pupkin one night in the canoe 
that she would only marry a man who was poor 
and had his way to make and would hew down 
difficulties for her sake. And when Pupkin 
couldn't answer the argument she was quite 
cross and silent all the way home. 

What was Peter Pupkin doing, then, at 
eight hundred dollars in a bank in Mari- 
posa ? If you ask that, it means that you 
know nothing of the life of the Maritime 
Provinces and the sturdy temper of the people. 
I suppose there are no people in the world who 
hate luxury and extravagance and that sort of 
thing quite as much as the Maritime Province 
people, and, of them, no one hated luxury more 
than Pupkin senior. 

Don't mistake the man. He wore a long seal- 
skin coat in winter, yes ; but mark you, not as 

183 



Srmshine Sketches 



a matter of luxury, but merely as a question of 
his lungs. He smoked, I admit it, a thirty-five 
cent cigar, not because he preferred it, but merely 
through a delicacy of the thorax that made it 
imperative. He drank champagne at lunch, I 
concede the point, not in the least from the 
enjo5mient of it, but simply on account of a 
peculiar affection of the tongue and lips that 
positively dictated it. His own longing — and his 
wife shared it — was for the simple, simple life — 
an island somewhere, with birds and trees. They 
had bought three or four islands — one in the St. 
Lawrence, and two in the Gulf, and one off the 
coast of Maine — looking for this sort of thing. 
Pupkin senior often said that he wanted to have 
some place that would remind him of the little 
old farm up the Aroostook where he was brought 
up. He often bought little old farms, just to 
try them, but they always turned out to be so 
near a city that he cut them into real estate lots, 
without even having had time to look at 
them. 

But — and this is where the emphasis lay — in 
the matter of luxury for his only son, Peter, 
Pupkin senior was a Maritime Province man right 
to the core, with all the hardihood of the United 
Empire Loyalists ingrained in him. No luxury 
for that boy ! No, sir ! From his childhood, 
Pupkin senior had undertaken, at the least sign 
184 



Zena Pepperleigh 



of luxury, to " tan it out of him," after the fashion 
still in vogue in the provinces. Then he sent 
him to an old-fashioned school to get it " thumped 
out of him," and after that he had put him for 
a year on a Nova Scotia schooner to get it 
" knocked out of him." If, after all that, young 
Pupkin, even when he came to Mariposa, wore 
cameo pins and daffodil blazers, and broke out 
into ribbed silk saffron ties on pay day, it only 
shows that the old Adam still needs further 
tanning even in the Maritime Provinces. 

Young Pupkin, of course, was to have gone 
into law. That was his father's cherished dream 
and would have made the firm Pupkin, Pupkin, 
Pupkin and Pupkin, as it ought to have been. 
But young Peter was kept out of the law by the 
fool system of examinations devised since his 
father's time. Hence there was nothing for it 
but to sling him into a bank ; " sling him " was, 
I think, the expression. So his father decided 
that if Pupkin was to be slung, he should be slung 
good and far — clean into Canada (you know the 
way they use that word in the Maritime Pro- 
vinces). And to sling Pupkin he called in the 
services of an old friend, a man after his own 
heart, just as violent as himself, who used to be 
at the law school in the city with Pupkin senior 
thirty years ago. So this friend, who happened 
to live in Mariposa, and who was a violent man, 

185 



Sunshine Sketches 



said at once : " Edward, by Jehosephat ! send 
the boy up here." 

So that is how Pupkin came to MaripQsa. And 
if, when he got there, his father's friend gave no 
sign, and treated the boy with roughness and 
incivihty, that may have been, for all I know, a 
continuation of the " tanning " process of the 
Maritime people. 

Did I mention that the Pepperleigh family, 
generations ago, had taken up land near the 
Aroostook, and that it was from there the judge's 
father came to Tecumseh township ? Perhaps 
not, but it doesn't matter. 

' But surely after such reminiscences as these, 
the awful things that are impending over Mr. 
Pupkin must be kept for another chapter. 



i86 



Chapter IX 
The Mariposa Bank Mystery 

SUICIDE is a thing that ought not to be 
committed without very careful thought. 
It often involves serious consequences, 
and in some cases brings pain to others than 
oneself. 

I don't say that there is no justification for 
it. There often is. Anybody who has listened 
to certain kinds of music, or read certain kinds of 
poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances 
upon the concertina, will admit that there are 
some lives which ought not to be continued, and 
that even suicide has its brighter aspects. 

But to commit suicide on grounds of love is 
at the best a very dubious experiment. I know 
that in this I am expressing an opinion contrary 
to that of most true lovers who embrace suicide 
on the slightest provocation as the only honour- 
able termination of an existence that never ought 
to have begun. 

I quite admit that there is a glamour and a 
sensation about the thing which has its charm, and 

187 



Sunshine Sketches 



that there is nothing like it for causing a girl 
to realize the value of the heart that she has 
broken and which breathed forgiveness upon her 
at the very moment when it held in its hand the 
half pint of prussic acid that was to terminate its 
beating for ever. 

But apart from the general merits of the 
question, I suppose there are few people, outside 
of lovers, who know what it is to commit suicide 
four times in five weeks. 

Yet this was what happened to Mr. Pupkin, of 
the Exchange Bank of Mariposa. 

Ever since he had known Zena Pepperleigh he 
had realized that his love for her was hopeless. 
She was too beautiful for him and too good for 
him ; her father hated him and her mother 
despised him ; his salary was too small and his 
own people were too rich. 

If you add to all that that he came up to the 
judge's house one night and found a poet reciting 
verses to Zena, you will understand the suicide 
at once. It was one of those regular poets with 
a solemn jackass face, and lank parted hair and 
eyes like puddles of molasses. I don't know how 
he came there — up from the city, probably — but 
there he was on the Pepperleighs' verandah that 
August evening. He was reciting poetry — either 
Tennyson's or Shelley's, or his own, you couldn't 
tell — and about him sat Zena with her hands 



The Mariposa Bank Mystery 

clasped and Nora Gallagher looking at the sky 
and Jocelyn Drone gazing into infinity, and a 
little tubby woman looking at the poet with her 
head falling over sideways — in fact, there was a 
whole group of them. 

I don't know what it is about poets that draws 
women to them in this way. But everybody knows 
that a poet has only to sit and saw the air with 
his hands and recite verses in a deep stupid voice, 
and all the women are crazy over him. Men despise 
him and would kick him off the verandah if they 
dared, but the women simply rave over him. 

So Pupkin sat there in the gloom and listened 
to this poet reciting Browning and he realized 
that everybody understood it but him. He could 
see Zena with her eyes fixed on the poet as if she 
were hanging on to every syllable (she was ; she 
needed to), and he stood it just about fifteen 
minutes and then slid off the side of the verandah 
and disappeared without even saying good-night. 

He walked straight down Oneida Street and 
along the Main Street just as hard as he could go. 
There was only one purpose in his mind, — suicide. 
He was heading straight for Jim Eliot's drug 
store on the main corner and his idea was to buy 
a drink of chloroform and drink it and die right 
there on the spot. 

As Pupkin walked down the street, the whole 
189 



Sunshine Sketches 



thing was so vivid in his mind that he could 
picture it to the remotest detail. He could even 
see it all in type, in big headings in the newspapers 
of the following day: 

APPALLING SUICIDE. 
PETER PUPKIN POISONED. 

He perhaps hoped that the thing might lead 
to some kind of public enquiry and that the 
question of Browning's poetry and whether it is 
altogether fair to allow of its general circulation 
would be fully ventilated in the newspapers. 

Thinking all that, Pupkin came to the main 
corner. 

On a warm August evening the drug store of 
Mariposa, as you know, is all a blaze of lights. 
You can hear the hissing of the soda-water foun- 
tain half a block away, and inside the store there 
are ever so many people — boys and girls and old 
people too — all drinking sarsaparilla and choco- 
late sundaes and lemon sours and foaming drinks 
that you take out of long straws. There is such 
a laughing and a talking as you never heard and 
the girls are all in white and pink and Cambridge 
blue, and the soda fountain is of white marble with 
silver taps, and it hisses and sputters, and Jim 
Eliot and his assistant wear white coats with red 
geraniums in them, and it's all just as gay as gay. 
190 



The Mariposa Bank Mystery 

The foyer of the opera in Paris may be a fine 
sight, but I doubt if it can compare with the 
inside of EHot's drug store in Mariposa — for real 
gaiety and joy of living. 

This night the store was especially crowded 
because it was a Saturday and that meant early 
closing for all the hotels, except, of course, 
Smith's. So as the hotels were shut, the people 
were all in the drug store, drinking like fishes. 
It just shows the folly of Local Option and the 
Temperance Movement and all that. Why, if 
you shut the hotels you simply drive the people 
to the soda fountains and there's more drinking 
than ever, and not only of the men, too, but 
the girls and young boys and children. I've 
seen little things of eight and nine that had 
to be lifted up on the high stools at Eliot's drug 
store, drinking great goblets of lemon soda, 
enough to burst them — brought there by their 
own fathers, and why ? Simply because the 
hotel bars were shut. 

What's the use of thinking you can stop people 
drinking merely by cutting off whiskey and 
brandy ? The only effect is to drive them to 
taking lemon sour and sarsaparilla and cherry 
pectoral and caroka cordial and things they 
wouldn't have touched before. So in the long 
run they drink more than ever. The point is that 
you can't prevent people having a good time, no 

191 



Sunshine Sketches 



matter how hard you try. If they can't have it 
with lager beer and brandy, they'll have it with 
plain soda and lemon pop, and so the whole 
gloomy scheme of the temperance people breaks 
down, anyway. 

But I was only saying that Eliot's drug store 
in Mariposa on a Saturday night is the gayest and 
brightest spot in the world. 

And just imagine what a fool of a place to 
commit suicide in ! 

Just imagine going up to the soda-water foun- 
tain and asking for five cents' worth of chloroform 
and soda ! Well, you simply can't, that's all. 

That's the way Pupkin found it. You see, as 
soon as he came in, somebody called out : " Hello, 
Pete ! " and one or two others called : " Hullo, 
Pup ! " and some said : " How goes it ? " and 
others : " How are you toughing it ? " and so on, 
because you see they had all been drinking more 
or less and naturally they felt jolly and glad- 
hearted. 

So the upshot of it was that instead of taking 
chloroform, Pupkin stepped up to the counter of 
the fountain and he had a bromo-seltzer with 
cherry soda, and after that he had one of those 
aerated seltzers, and then a couple of lemon 
seltzers and a bromophizzer. 

I don't know if you know the mental effect of 
a bromo-seltzer. 

192 



The Mariposa Bank Mystery 

But it's a hard thing to commit suicide on. 

You can't. 

You feel so buoyant. 

Anyway, what with the phizzing of the seltzer 
and the lights and the girls, Pupkin began to 
feel so fine that he didn't care a cuss for all the 
Browning in the world, and as for the poet — oh, 
to blazes with him ! What's poetry, anyway ? — 
only rh5mies. 

So, would you believe it, in about ten minutes 
Peter Pupkin was off again and heading straight 
for the Pepperleighs' house, poet or no poet, and 
what was more to the point, he carried with him 
three great bricks of Eliot's ice cream — in green, 
pink and brown layers. He struck the verandah 
just at the moment when Browning was getting 
too stale and dreary for words. His brain was 
all sizzling and jolly with the bromo-seltzer, and 
when he fetched out the ice cream bricks and 
Zena ran to get plates and spoons to eat it with, 
and Pupkin went with her to help fetch them and 
they picked out the spoons together, they were 
so laughing and happy that it was just a marvel. 
Girls, you know, need no bromo-seltzer. They're 
full of it all the time. 

And as for the poet — well, can you imagine how 
Pupkin felt when Zena told him that the poet was 
married, and that the tubby little woman with 
her head on sideways was his wife ? 

193 o 



Sunshine Sketches 



So they had the ice cream, and the poet ate it 
in bucketsful. Poets ahvays do. They need it. 
And after it the poet recited some stanzas of his 
own and Pupkin saw that he had misjudged the 
man, because it was dandy poetry, the very best. 
That night Pupkin walked home on air and there 
was no thought of chloroform, and it turned out 
that he hadn't committed suicide, but like all 
lovers he had commuted it. 

I don't need to describe in full the later suicides 
of Mr. Pupkin, because they were all conducted 
on the same plan and rested on something the 
same reasons as above. 

Sometimes he would go down at night to the 
offices of the bank below his bedroom and bring 
up his bank revolver in order to make an end 
of himself with it. This, too, he could see headed 
up in the newspapers as : 

BRILLIANT BOY BANKER BLOWS OUT 
BRAINS. 

But blowing your brains out is a noisy, rackety 
performance, and Pupkin soon found that only 
special kinds of brains are suited for it. So he 
always sneaked back again later in the night and 
put the revolver in its place, deciding to drown 
himself instead. Yet every time that he walked 
194 



The Mariposa Bank Mystery 

down to the Trestle Bridge over the Ossawippi he 
found it was quite unsuitable for drowning — too 
high, and the water too swift and black, and the 
rushes too gruesome — in fact, not at all the kind 
of place for a drowning. 

Far better, he realized, to wait there on the 
railroad track and throw himself under the 
wheels of the express and be done with it. Yet, 
though Pupkin often waited in this way for the 
train, he was never able to pick out a pair of 
wheels that suited him. Anyhow, it's awfully 
hard to tell an express from a fast freight. 

I wouldn't mention these attempts at suicide 
if one of them hadn't finally culminated in making 
Peter Pupkin a hero and solving for him the 
whole perplexed entanglement of his love affair 
with Zena Pepperleigh. Incidentally it threw 
him into the very centre of one of the most 
impenetrable bank mysteries that ever baffled 
the ingenuity of some of the finest legal talent 
that ever adorned one of the most enterprising 
communities in the country. 

It happened one night, as I say, that Pupkin 
decided to go down into the office of the bank and 
get his revolver and see if it would blow his 
brains out. It was the night of the Firemen's 
Ball and Zena had danced four times with a 
visitor from the city, a man who was in the 
fourth year at the University and who knew 

195 



Sunshine Sketches 



everything. It was more than Peter Pupkin 
could bear. Mallory Tompkins was away that 
night, and when Pupkin came home he was all 
alone in the building, except for Gillis, the care- 
taker, who lived in the extension at the back. 

He sat in his room for hours brooding. Two 
or three times he picked up a book — he remem- 
bered afterwards distinctly that it was Kant's 
Critique of Pure Reason — and tried to read it, 
but it seemed meaningless and trivial. Then 
with a sudden access of resolution he started from 
his chair and made his way down the stairs and 
into the office room of the bank, meaning to get 
a revolver and kill himself on the spot and let 
them find his body lying on the floor. 

It was then far on in the night and the empty 
building of the bank was as still as death. Pupkin 
could hear the stairs creak under his feet, and as 
he went he thought he heard another sound like 
the opening or closing of a door. But it sounded 
not like the sharp ordinary noise of a closing door 
but with a dull muffled noise as if some one had 
shut the iron door of a safe in a room under the 
ground. For a moment Pupkin stood and lis- 
tened with his heart thumping against his ribs. 
Then he kicked his slippers from his feet and 
without a sound stole into the office on the 
ground floor and took the revolver from his 
teller's desk. As he gripped it, he listened to the 
196 



The Mariposa Bank Mystery 

sounds on the back-stairway and in the vaults 
below. 

I should explain that in the Exchange Bank of 
Mariposa the offices are on the ground floor level 
with the street. Below this is another floor with 
low dark rooms paved with flagstones, with un- 
used office desks and with piles of papers stored 
in boxes. On this floor are the vaults of the bank, 
and lying in them in the autumn — the grain season 
— there is anything from fifty to a hundred thou- 
sand dollars in currency tied in bundles. There 
is no other light down there than the dim reflection 
from the lights out on the street, that lies in 
patches on the stone floor. 

I think as Peter Pupkin stood, revolver in 
hand, in the office of the bank, he had forgotten 
all about the maudlin purpose of his first coming. 
He had forgotten for the moment all about heroes 
and love affairs, and his whole mind was focussed, 
sharp and alert, with the intensity of the night- 
time, on the sounds that he heard in the vault 
and on the back-stairway of the bank. 

Straight away, Pupkin knew what it meant as 
plainly as if it w^ere written in print. He had 
forgotten, I say, about being a hero and he only 
knew that there was sixty thousand dollars in 
the vault of the bank below, and that he was 
paid eight hundred dollars a year to look after it- 

As Peter Pupkin stood there listening to the 
197 



Sunshine Sketches 



sounds in his stockinged feet, his face showed 
grey as ashes in the hght that fell through the 
window from the street. His heart beat like a 
hammer against his ribs. But behind its beatings 
was the blood of four generations of Loyalists, 
and the robber who would take that sixty thou- 
sand dollars from the Mariposa bank must take 
it over the dead body of Peter Pupkin, teller. 

Pupkin walked down the stairs to the lower 
room, the one below the ground with the 
bank vault in it, with as fine a step as any 
of his ancestors showed on parade. And if he 
had known it, as he came down the stairway 
in the front of the vault room, there was a 
man crouched in the shadow of the passage way 
by the stairs at the back. This man, too, held 
a revolver in his hand, and, criminal or not, his 
face was as resolute as Pupkin's own. As he 
heard the teller's step on the stair, he turned and 
waited in the shadow of the doorway without a 
sound. 

There is no need really to mention all these 
details. They are only of interest as showing how 
sometimes a bank teller in a corded smoking 
jacket and stockinged feet may sometimes be 
turned into such a hero as even the Mariposa girls 
might dream about. 

All of this must have happened at about three 
198 



The Mariposa Bank Mystery 

o'clock in the night. This much was estabhshed 
afterwards from the evidence of Gilhs, the care- 
taker. When he first heard the sounds he had 
looked at his watch and noticed that it was half- 
past two ; the watch he knew was three-quarters 
of an hour slow three days before and had been 
gaining since. The exact time at which Gillis 
heard footsteps in the bank and started down- 
stairs, pistol in hand, became a nice point after- 
wards in the cross-examination. 

But one must not anticipate. Pupkin reached 
the iron door of the bank safe, and knelt in front 
of it, feeling in the dark to find the fracture of 
the lock. As he knelt, he heard a sound behind 
him, and swung round on his knees and saw the 
bank robber in the half light of the passage way 
and the glitter of a pistol in his hand. The rest 
was over in an instant. Pupkin heard a voice 
that was his own, but that sounded strange and 
hollow, call out : " Drop that, or Til fire ! " and 
then just as he raised his revolver, there came 
a blinding flash of light before his eyes, and Peter 
Pupkin, junior teller of the bank, fell forward on 
the floor and knew no more. 

At that point, of course, I ought to close 
down a chapter, or volume, or, at least, strike 
the reader over the head with a sandbag to 
force him to stop and think. In common 

199 



Sunshine Sketches 



fairness one ought to stop here and count a 
hundred or get up and walk round a block, or, 
at any rate, picture to oneself Peter Pupkin lying 
on the floor of the bank, motionless, his arms 
distended, the revolver still grasped in his hand. 
But I must go on. 

By half-past seven on the following morning 
it was known all over Mariposa that Peter Pupkin 
the junior teller of the Exchange had been shot 
dead by a bank robber in the vault of the building. 
It was known also that Gillis, the caretaker, had 
been shot and killed at the foot of the stairs, and 
that the robber had made off with fifty thousand 
dollars in currency ; that he had left a trail of 
blood on the sidewalk and that the men were out 
tracking him with bloodhounds in the great 
swamps to the north of the town. 

This, I say, and it is important to note it, was 
what they knew at half-past seven. Of course 
as each hour went past they learned more and 
more. At eight o'clock it was known that 
Pupkin was not dead, but dangerously wounded 
in the lungs. At eight-thirty it was known that 
he was not shot in the lungs, but that the ball 
had traversed the pit of his stomach. 

At nine o'clock it was learned that the pit of 
Pupkin 's stomach was all right, but that the 
bullet had struck his right ear and carried it 
away. Finalty it was learned that his ear had 

200 



The Mariposa Bank Mystery 

not exactly been carried away, that is, not 
precisely removed by the bullet, but that it had 
grazed Pupkin's head in such a way that it 
had stunned him, and if it had been an inch or 
two more to the left it might have reached his 
brain. This, of course, was just as good as being 
killed from the point of view of public interest. 

Indeed, by nine o'clock Pupkin could be himself 
seen on the Main Street with a great bandage 
sideways on his head, pointing out the traces of 
the robber. Gillis, the caretaker, too, it was 
known by eight, had not been killed. He had 
been shot through the brain, but whether the 
injury was serious or not was only a matter of 
conjecture. In fact, by ten o'clock it was under- 
stood that the bullet from the robber's second 
shot had grazed the side of the caretaker's head, 
but as far as could be known his brain was just 
as before. I should add that the first report 
about the bloodstains and the swamp and the 
bloodhounds turned out to be inaccurate. The 
stains may have been blood, but as they led to 
the cellar way of Netley's store they may have 
also been molasses, though it was argued, to be 
sure, that the robber might well have poured 
molasses over the bloodstains from sheer cunning. 

It was remembered, too, that there were no 
bloodhounds in Mariposa, although, mind you, 
there are any amount of dogs there. 

201 



Sunshine Sketches 



So you see that by ten o'clock in the morning 
the whole affair was settling into the impenetrable 
mystery which it ever since remained. 

Not that there wasn't evidence enough. There 
w^as Pupkin's own story and Gillis's story, and the 
stories of all the people who had heard the shots 
and seen the robber (some said, the bunch of 
robbers) go running past (others said, walking 
past), in the night. Apparently the robber ran 
up and down half the streets of Mariposa before 
he vanished. 

But the stories of Pupkin and Gillis were plain 
enough. Pupkin related that he heard sounds 
in the bank and came downstairs just in time to 
see the robber crouching in the passage-way and 
that the robber was a large hulking, villainous 
looking man, wearing a heavy coat. Gillis told 
exactly the same story, having heard the noises 
at the same time, except that he first described 
the robber as a small thin fellow (peculiarly 
villainous looking, however, even in the dark), 
wearing a short jacket ; but on thinking it over, 
Gillis realized that he had been wrong about the 
size of the criminal, and that he was even bigger, 
if anything, than what Mr. Pupkin thought. 
Gillis had fired at the robber, just at the same 
moment had Mr. Pupkin. 

Beyond that, all was mystery, absolute and 
impenetrable. 

202 



The Mariposa Bank Mystery 

By eleven o'clock the detectives had come up 
from the city under orders from the head of the 
bank. 



I wish you could have seen the two detectives 
as they moved to and fro in Mariposa — fine 
looking, stern, impenetrable men that they 
were. They seemed to take in the whole town 
by instinct and so quietly. They found their 
way to Mr. Smith's Hotel just as quietly as if it 
wasn't design at all and stood there at the bar, 
picking up scraps of conversation — you know 
the w^ay detectives do it. Occasionally they 
allowed one or two bystanders — confederates, 
perhaps — to buy a drink for them, and you could 
see from the way they drank it that they were 
still listening for a clue. If there had been the 
faintest clue in Smith's Hotel or in the Mariposa 
House or in the Continental, those fellows would 
have been at it like a flash. 

To see them moving round the town that day — 
silent, massive, imperturbable — gave one a great 
idea of their strange dangerous calling. They 
went about the town all day and 3^et in such a 
quiet peculiar way that you couldn't have realized 
that they were working at all. They ate their 
dinner together at Smith's cafe and took an hour 
and a half over it to throw people off the scent. 
Then when they got them off it, they sat and 
203 



Sunshine Sketches 



talked with Josh Smith in the back bar to keep 
them off. Mr. Smith seemed to take to them right 
away. They were men of his own size, or near 
it, and anyway hotel men and detectives have a 
general affinity and share in the same impene- 
trable silence and in their confidential knowledge 
of the w^eaknesses of the public. 

Mr. Smith, too, was of great use to the detec- 
tives. " Boys," he said, ** I wouldn't ask too 
close as to what folks was out late at night : in 
this town it don't do." 

When those two great brains finally left for 
the city on the five-thirty, it was hard to realize 
that behind each grand, impassible face a perfect 
vortex of clues was seething. 

But if the detectives were heroes, what was 
Pupkin ! Imagine him with his bandage on his 
head standing in front of the bank and talking of 
the midnight robbery with that peculiar false 
modesty that only heroes are entitled to use. 

I don't know whether you have ever been a 
hero, but for sheer exhilaration there is nothing 
like it. And for Mr. Pupkin, who had gone 
through life thinking himself no good, to be 
suddenly exalted into the class of Napoleon 
Bonaparte and John Maynard and the Charge of 
the Light Brigade — oh, it was wonderful. Be- 
cause Pupkin was a brave man now and he knew 
it and acquired with it all the brave man's 
204 



The Mariposa Bank Mystei-y 

modesty. In fact, I believe he was heard to say 
that he had only done his duty, and that what he 
did was what any other man would have done : 
though when somebody else said : " That's so, 
when you come to think of it," Pupkin turned 
on him that quiet look of the wounded hero, 
bitterer than words. 

And if Pupkin had known that all of the after- 
noon papers in the city reported him dead, he 
would have felt more luxurious still. 

That afternoon the Mariposa court sat in 
enquiry, — technically it was summoned in inquest 
on the dead robber — though they hadn't found 
the body — and it w^as wonderful to see them lining 
up the witnesses and holding cross-examinations. 
There is something in the cross-examination of 
great criminal lawyers like Nivens, of Mariposa, 
and in the counter examinations of presiding 
judges like Pepperleigh that thrills you to the 
core with the astuteness of it. 

They had Henry Mullins, the manager, on the 
stand for an hour and a half, and the excitement 
was so breathless that you could have heard a 
pin drop. Nivens took him on first. 

'* What is your name ? " he said. 

" Henry Augustus Mullins." 

** What position do you hold ? " 

" I am manager of the Exchange Bank." 

** When were you born ? " 
205 



SunsJmie Sketches 



" December 30, 1869." 

After that, Nivens stood looking quietly at 
Mullins. You could feel that he was thinking 
pretty deeply before he shot the next question 
at him. 

" Where did you go to school ? " 

Mullins answered straight off: " The high 
school down home," and Nivens thought again 
for a while and then asked : 

" How many boys were at the school ? " 

" About sixty." 

" How many masters ? " 

" About three." 

After that Nivens paused a long while and 
seemed to be digesting the evidence, but at last 
an idea seemed to strike him and he said : 

" I understand you were not on the bank 
premises last night. Where were you ? " 

" Down the lake duck shooting." 

You should have seen the excitement in the 
court when Mullins said this. The judge leaned 
forward in his chair and broke in at once. 

" Did you get any, Harry ? " he asked. 

* Yes," Mullins said, " about six." 

" Where did you get them ? What ? In the 
wild rice marsh past the river ? You don't say 
so ! Did you get them on the sit or how ? " 

All of these questions were fired off at the wit- 
ness from the court in a single breath. In fact, 
206 



The Marijjosa Banh Mystery 

it was the knowledge that the first ducks of the 
season had been seen in the Ossawippi marsh that 
led to the termination of the proceedings before 
the afternoon was a quarter over. Mullins and 
George Duff and half the witnesses were off with 
shotguns as soon as the court was cleared. 

I may as well state at once that the full story 
of the robbery of the bank at Mariposa never came 
to the light. A number of arrests — mostly of 
vagrants and suspicious characters — were made, 
but the guilt of the robbery was never brought 
home to them. One man was arrested twenty 
miles away, at the other end of Missinaba county, 
who not only corresponded exactly with the 
description of the robber, but, in addition to this, 
had a wooden leg. Vagrants with one leg are 
always regarded with suspicion in places like 
Mariposa, and whenever a robbery or a murder 
happens they are arrested in batches. 

It was never even known just how much money 
was stolen from the bank. Some people said ten 
thousand dollars, others more. The bank, no 
doubt for business motives, claimed that the 
contents of the safe were intact and that the 
robber had been foiled in his design. 

But none of this matters to the exaltation of 
Mr. Pupkin. Good fortune, like bad, never comes 
in small instalments. On that wonderful day, 
207 



Sunshine Sketches 



every good thing happened to Peter Pupkin at 
once. The morning saw him a hero. At the 
sitting of the court, the judge publicly told him 
that his conduct was fit to rank among the annals 
of the pioneers of Tecumseh Townships, and asked 
him to his house for supper. At five o'clock he 
received the telegram of promotion from the head 
office that raised his salary to a thousand dollars, 
and made him not only a hero but a marriageable 
man. At six o'clock he started up to the judge's 
house with his resolution nerved to the most 
momentous step of his life. 

His mind was made up. 

He would do a thing seldom if ever done in 
Mariposa. He would propose to Zena Pepper- 
leigh. In Mariposa this kind of step, I say, is 
seldom taken. The course of love runs on and 
on through all its stages of tennis playing and 
dancing and sleigh riding, till by sheer notoriety 
of circumstance an understanding is reached. 
To propose straight out would be thought priggish 
and affected and is supposed to belong only to 
people in books. 

But Pupkin felt that w^hat ordinary people 
dare not do, heroes are allowed to attempt. He 
would propose to Zena, and more than that, he 
would tell her in a straight, manly way that he 
was rich and take the consequences. 

And he did it. 

208 



The Mariposa Bank Mystery 

That night on the piazza, where the hammock 
hangs in the shadow of the Virginia creeper, he did 
it. By sheer good luck the judge had gone indoors 
to the Hbrary, and by a piece of rare good fortune 
Mrs. Pepperleigh had gone indoors to the sewing 
room, and by a happy trick of coincidence, the 
servant was out and the dog was tied up — in fact, 
no such chain of circumstances was ever offered 
in favour of mortal man before. 

What Zena said — beyond saying yes — I do not 
know. I am sure that when Pupkin told her of 
the money, she bore up as bravely as so fine a 
girl as Zena would, and when he spoke of diamonds 
she said she would wear them for his sake. 

They were saying these things and other 
things — ever so many other things — ^when there 
was such a roar and a clatter up Oneida Street 
as you never heard, and there came bounding up 
to the house one of the most marvellous Limousine 
touring cars that ever drew up at the home of a 
judge on a modest salary of three thousand dollars. 
When it stopped there sprang from it an excited 
man in a long sealskin coat — worn not for the 
luxury of it at all but from the sheer chilliness of 
the autumn evening. And it was, as of course 
you know, Pupkin's father. He had seen the 
news of his son's death in the evening paper in 
the city. They drove the car through, so the 
chauffeur said, in two hours and a quarter, and 

209 p 



Sunshine Sketches 



behind them there was to follow a special trainload 
of detectives and emergency men, but Pupkin 
senior had cancelled all that by telegram half way 
up when he heard that Peter was still living. 

For a moment as his eye rested on young 
Pupkin you would almost have imagined, had 
you not known that he came from the Maritime 
Provinces, that there were tears in them and 
that he was about to hug his son to his heart. 
But if he didn't hug Peter to his heart, he cer- 
tainly did within a few moments clasp Zena to 
it, in that fine fatherly way in which they clasp 
pretty girls in the Maritime Provinces. The 
strangest thing is that Pupkin senior seemed to 
understand the whole situation without any 
explanations at all. 

Judge Pepperleigh, I think, would have shaken 
both of Pupkin senior's arms off when he saw 
him ; and when you heard them call one another 
" Ned " and " Phillip " it made you feel that they 
were boys again attending classes together at the 
old law school in the city. 

If Pupkin thought that his father wouldn't 
make a hit in Mariposa, it only showed his 
ignorance. Pupkin senior sat there on the judge's 
verandah smoking a corn cob pipe as if he had 
never heard of Havana cigars in his life. In the 
three days that he spent in Mariposa that autumn, 
he went in and out of Jeff Thorpe's barber shop 

210 



The Mariposa Bank Mystery 

and Eliot's drug store, shot black ducks in the 
marsh and played poker every evening at a hun- 
dred matches for a cent as if he had never lived 
any other hfe in all his days. They had to send 
him telegrams enough to fill a satchel to make 
him come away. 

So Pupkin and Zena in due course of time were 
married, and went to live in one of the enchanted 
houses on the hillside in the newer part of the 
town, where you may find them to this day. 

You may see Pupkin there at any time cutting 
enchanted grass on a little lawn in as gaudy a 
blazer as ever. 

But if you step up to speak to him or walk with 
him into the enchanted house, pray modulate 
your voice a little — musical though it is — for 
there is said to be an enchanted baby on the 
premises whose sleep must not lightly be 
disturbed. 



211 



Chapter X 

The Great Election in Missinaha 
County 

DON'T ask me what election it was, whether 
Dominion or Provincial or Imperial or 
Universal, for I scarcely know. 

It must, of course, have been going on in other 
parts of the country as well, but I saw it all 
from Missinaba County which, with the town of 
Mariposa, was, of course, the storm centre and 
focus point of the whole turmoil. 

I only know that it was a huge election and that 
on it turned issues of the most tremendous import- 
ance, such as whether or not Mariposa should 
become part of the United States, and whether 
the flag that had waved over the school house at 
Tecumseh Township for ten centuries, should be 
trampled under the hoof of an alien invader, and 
whether Britons should be slaves, and whether 
Canadians should be Britons, and whether the 
farming class would prove themselves Canadians, 
and tremendous questions of that kind. 

And there was such a roar and a tumult to it, 
and such a waving of flags and beating of drums 
213 



Sunshine Sketches 



and flaring of torchlights that such parts of the 
election as may have been going on elsewhere than 
in Missinaba county must have been quite 
unimportant and didn't really matter. 

Now that it is all over, we can look back at it 
without heat or passion. We can see, — it's plain 
enough now, — that in the great election Canada 
saved the British Empire, and that Missinaba 
saved Canada and that the vote of the Third Con- 
cession of Tecumseh Township saved Missinaba 
County, and that those of us w^ho carried the 
third concession, — well, there's no need to push 
it further. We prefer to be modest about it. 
If we still speak of it, it is only quietly and simply 
and not more than three or four times a day. 

But you can't understand the election at all, 
and the conventions and the campaigns and the 
nominations and the balloting, unless you first 
appreciate the peculiar complexion of politics in 
Mariposa. 

Let me begin at the beginning. Everybody in 
Mariposa is either a Liberal or a Conservative or 
else is both. Some of the people are or have been 
Liberals or Conservatives all their lives and are 
called dyed-in-the-wool Grits or old-time Tories 
and things of that sort. These people get from 
long training such a swift penetrating insight into 
national issues that they can decide the most 
complicated question in four seconds : in fact, 
214 



The Great Election 



just as soon as they grab the city papers out of 
the morning mail, they know the whole solution 
of any problem you can put to them. There are 
other people whose aim it is to be broad-minded 
and judicious and who vote Liberal or Conservative 
according to their judgment of the questions of 
the day. If their judgment of these questions 
tells them that there is something in it for them 
in voting Liberal, then they do so. But if not, 
they refuse to be the slaves of a party or the 
henchmen of any political leader. So that any- 
body looking for benches has got to keep away 
from them. 

But the one thing that nobody is allowed to do 
in Mariposa is to have no politics. Of course 
there are always some people whose circumstances 
compel them to say that they have no politics. 
But that is easily understood. Take the case of 
Trelawney, the postmaster. Long ago he was a 
letter carrier under the old Mackenzie Govern- 
ment, and later he was a letter sorter under the 
old Macdonald Government, and after that a 
letter stamper under the old Tupper Government, 
and so on. Trelawney always says that he has 
no politics, but the truth is that he has too many. 

So, too, with the clergy in Mariposa. They 
have no politics— absolutely none. Yet Dean 
Drone round election time always announces as 
his text such a verse as : " Lo ! is there not one 

2IS 



\ 



Sunshine Sketches 



righteous man in Israel ? " or : " What ho ! is 
it not time for a change ? " And that is a signal 
for all the Liberal business men to get up and 
leave their pews. 

Similarly over at the Presbyterian Church, the 
minister says that his sacred calling will not allow 
him to take part in politics and that his sacred 
calling prevents him from breathing even a word 
of harshness against his fellow man, but that 
when it comes to the elevation of the ungodly 
into high places in the commonwealth (this means, 
of course, the nomination of the Conservative 
candidate) then he's not going to allow his sacred 
calling to prevent him from saying just what he 
thinks of it. And by that time, having pretty well 
cleared the church of Conservatives, he proceeds 
to show from the scriptures that the ancient 
Hebrews were Liberals to a man, except those 
who were drowned in the flood or who perished, 
more or less deservedly, in the desert. 

There are, I say, some people who are allowed 
to claim to have no politics, — the office holders, 
and the clergy and the school teachers and the 
hotel keepers. But beyond them, anybody in 
Mariposa who says that he has no politics is 
looked upon as crooked, and people wonder what 
it is that he is " out after." 

In fact, the whole town and county is a hive of 
politics, and people who have only witnessed 
216 



The Great Election 



gatherings such as the House of Commons at 
Westminster and the Senate at Washington and 
never seen a Conservative Convention at Tecumseh 
Comers or a Liberal Rally at the Concession school 
house, don't know what politics means. 

So you may imagine the excitement in Mariposa 
when it became known that King George had 
dissolved the parliament of Canada and had sent 
out a writ or command for ]\Iissinaba County to 
elect for him some other person than John Henry 
Bagshaw because he no longer had confidence in 
him. 

The king, of course, is very well known, very 
favourably known, in Mariposa. Everybody re- 
members how he visited the town on his great 
tour in Canada, and stopped off at the Mariposa 
station. Although he was only a prince at the 
time, there was quite a big crowd down at the 
depot and everybody felt what a shame it was 
that the prince had no time to see more of Mari- 
posa, because he would get such a false idea of 
it, seeing only the station and the lumber yards. 
Still, they all came to the station and all the 
Liberals and Conservatives mixed together per- 
fectly freely and stood side by side without any 
distinction, so that the prince should not observe 
any party differences among them. And he 
didn't, — you could see that he didn't. They 
read him an address all about the tranquillity and 
217 



Sunsldne Sketches 



loyalty of the Empire, and they purposely left 
out any reference to the trouble over the town 
wharf or the big row there had been about the 
location of the new post-office. There was a 
general decent feeling that it wouldn't be fair to 
disturb the prince with these things : later on, 
as king, he would, of course, have to know ail 
about them, but meanwhile it was better to leave 
him with the idea that his empire was tranquil. 

So they deliberately couched the address in 
terms that were just as reassuring as possible and 
the prince was simply delighted with it. I am 
certain that he slept pretty soundly after hearing 
that address. Why, you could see it taking effect 
even on his aide-de-camps and the people round 
him, so imagine how the prince must have felt ! 

I think in Mariposa they understand kings per- 
fectly. Every time that a king or a prince comes« 
they try to make him see the bright side of every- 
thing and let him think that they're all united. 
Judge Pepperleigh walked up and down arm in 
arm with Dr. Gallagher, the worst Grit in the town, 
just to make the prince feel fine. 

So when they got the news that the king had 
lost confidence in John Henry Bagshaw, the sitting 
member, they never questioned it a bit. Lost 
confidence ? All right, they'd elect him another 
right away. They'd elect him half a dozen if he 
needed them. They don't mind ; they'd elect the 
218 



The Great Election 



whole town man after man rather than have the 
king worried about it. 

In any case, all the Conservatives had been 
wondering for years how the king and the 
governor-general and men like that had tolerated 
such a man as Bagshaw so long. 

Missinaba County, I say, is a regular hive of 
politics, and not the miserable, crooked, money- 
ridden politics of the cities, but the straight, real 
old-fashioned thing that is an honour to the 
country side. Any man who would offer to take 
a bribe or sell his convictions for money, would 
be an object of scorn. I don't say they wouldn't 
take money, — they would, of course, why not ? — 
but if they did they would take it in a straight 
fearless way and say nothing about it. They 
might, — it's only human, — accept a job or a 
contract from the government, but if they did, 
rest assured it would be in a broad national spirit 
and not for the sake of the work itself. No, sir. 
Not for a minute. 

Any man who wants to get the votes of the 
Missinaba farmers and the Mariposa business men 
has got to persuade them that he's the right man. 
If he can do that, — if he can persuade any one of 
them that he is the right man and that all the 
rest know it, then th'ey'll vote for him. 

The division, I repeat, between the Liberals 
and the Conservatives, is intense. Yet you might 
219 



Sunshine Sketches 



live for a long while in the town, between elec- 
tions, and never know it. It is only when you 
get to understand the people that you begin to 
see that there is a cross division running through 
them that nothing can ever remove. You grad- 
ually become aware of fine subtle distinctions that 
miss your observation at first. Outwardly, they 
are all friendly enough. For instance, Joe 
Milligan the dentist is a Conservative, and has 
been for six years, and yet he shares the same boat- 
house with young Dr. Gallagher, who is a Liberal, 
and they even bought a motor boat between 
them. Pete Glover and Alf McNichol were in 
partnership in the hardware and paint store, 
though they belonged on different sides. 

But just as soon as elections drew near, the 
differences in politics became perfectly apparent. 
Liberals and Conservatives drew away from one 
another. Joe Milligan used the motor boat one 
Saturday and Dr. Gallagher the next, and Pete 
Glover sold hardware on one side of the store 
and Alf McNichol sold paint on the other. 
You soon realized too that one of the news- 
papers was Conservative and the other was 
Liberal, that there was a Liberal drug store 
and a Conservative drug store, and so on. 
Similarly round election time, the Mariposa 
House was the Liberal Hotel, and the Continental 
Conservative, though Mr. Smith's place, where 
220 



The Great Election 



they always put on a couple of extra bar tenders, 
was what you might call Independent-Liberal- 
Conservative, with a dash of Imperialism thrown 
in. Mr. Gingham, the undertaker, was, as a 
nafural effect of his calling, an advanced Liberal, 
but at election time he always engaged a special 
assistant for embalming Conservative customers. 

So now, I think, you understand something of 
the general political surroundings of the great 
election in Missinaba County. 

John Henry Bagshaw was the sitting member, 
the Liberal member, for Missinaba County. 

The Liberals called him the old war horse, and 
the old battle-axe, and the old charger and the 
old champion and all sorts of things of that kind. 
The Conservatives called him the old jackass and 
the old army mule and the old booze fighter and 
the old grafter and the old scoundrel. 

John Henry Bagshaw was, I suppose, one of 
the greatest political forces in the world. He 
had flowing white hair crowned with a fedora 
hat, and a smooth statesmanlike face which it 
cost the country twenty-five cents a day to 
shave. 

Altogether the Dominion of Canada had spent 
over two thousand dollars in shaving that face 
during the twenty years that Bagshaw had 
represented Missinaba County. But the result 
had been well worth it. 

221 



Sunshine Sketches 



Bagshaw wore a long political overcoat that 
it cost the country twenty cents a day to brush, 
and boots that cost the Dominion fifteen cents 
every morning to shine. 

But it was money well spent. 

Bagshaw of Mariposa was one of the most 
representative men of the age, and it's no wonder 
that he had been returned for the county for 
five elections running, leaving the Conservatives 
nowhere. Just think how representative he 
was. He owned two hundred acres out on the 
Third Concession and kept two men working on 
it all the time to prove that he was a practical 
farmer. They sent in fat hogs to the Missinaba 
County Agricultural Exposition and World's 
Fair every autumn, and Bagshaw himself stood 
beside the pig pens with the judges, and wore a 
pair of corduroy breeches and chewed a straw all 
afternoon. After that if any farmer thought that 
he was not properly represented in Padiament, it 
showed that he was an ass. 

Bagshaw owned a half share in the harness 
business and a quarter share in the tannery and 
that made him a business man. He paid for a 
pew in the Presbyterian Church and that repre- 
sented religion in Parliament. He attended col- 
lege for two sessions thirty years ago, and that 
represented education and kept him abreast 
with modern science, if not ahead of it. He kept 

222 



The Great Election 



a little account in one bank and a big account 
in the other, so that he was a rich man or a poor 
man at the same time. 

Add to that that John Henry Bagshaw was 
perhaps the finest orator in Mariposa. That, of 
course, is saying a great deal. There are speakers 
there, lots of them that can talk two or three hours 
at a stretch, but the old war horse could beat them 
all. They say that when John Henry Bagshaw got 
well started, say after a couple of hours of talk, he 
could speak as Pericles or Demosthenes or Cicero 
never could have spoken. 

You could tell Bagshaw a hundred yards off 
as a member of the House of Commons. He wore 
a pepper-and-salt suit to show that he came from 
a rural constituency, and he wore a broad gold 
watch-chain with dangling seals to show that he 
also represents a town. You could see from his 
quiet low collar and white tie that his electorate 
were a God-fearing, religious people, while the horse- 
shoe pin that he wore show^ed that his electorate 
were not without sporting instincts and knew a 
horse from a jackass. 

Most of the time, John Henry Bagshaw had 
to be at Ottawa (though he preferred the quiet 
of his farm and always left it, as he said, with a 
sigh). If he was not in Ottawa, he was in Wash- 
ington, and of course at any time they might need 
him in London, so that it was no wonder that he 

223 



Sunshine Sketches 



could only be in Mariposa about two months 
in the year. 

That is why everybody knew, when Bagshaw 
got off the afternoon train one day early in the 
spring, that there must be something very impor- 
tant coming and that the rumours about a new 
election must be perfectly true. 

Everything that he did showed this. He gave 
the baggage man twenty-five cents to take the 
check off his trunk, the 'bus driver fifty cents to 
drive him up to the Main Street, and he went into 
Callahan's tobacco store and bought two ten-cent 
cigars and took them across the street and gave 
them to Mallory Tompkins of the Times-Herald 
as a present from the Prime Minister. 

All that afternoon, Bagshaw went up and down 
the Main Street of Mariposa, and you could see, if 
you knew the signs of it, that there was politics 
in the air. He bought nails and putty and glass 
in the hardw^are store, and harness in the harness 
shop, and drugs in the drug store and toys in the 
toy shop, and all the things like that that are 
needed for a big campaign. 

Then when he had done all this he went over 
with McGinnis the Liberal organizer and Mallory 
Tompkins, the Times-Herald man, and Gingham 
(the great Independent-Liberal undertaker) to the 
back parlour in the Mariposa House. 

You could tell from the way John Henry Bagshaw 
224 



The Great Election 



closed the door before he sat down that he was in a 
pretty serious frame of mind. 

" Gentlemen/' he said, " the election is a 
certainty. We're going to have a big fight on 
our hands and we've got to get ready for it." 

"Is it going to be on the tariff ? " asked 
Tompkins. 

*' Yes, gentlemen, I'm afraid it is. The whole 
thing is going to turn on the tariff question. I 
wish it were otherwise. I think it madness, but 
they're bent on it, and we got to fight it on 
that line. Why they can't fight it merely on the 
question of graft," continued the old war horse, 
rising from his seat and walking up and down, 
" Heaven only knows. I warned them. I ap- 
pealed to them. I said, fight the thing on graft 
and we can win easy. Take this constituency, — 
why not have fought the thing out on whether 
I spent too much money on the town wharf or 
the post-office ? What better issues could a man 
want ? Let them claim that I am crooked, and 
let me claim that I'm not. Surely that was good 
enough without dragging in the tariff. But now, 
gentlemen, tell me about things in the constit- 
uency. Is there any talk yet of who is to 
run?" 

Mallory Tompkins lighted up the second of the 
Prime Minister's cigars and then answered for the 
group : 

225 Q 



Sunshine Shetches 



" Everybody says that Edward Drone is going 
to run." 

" Ah ! '' said the old war horse and there 
was joy upon his face, " is he ? At last ! That's 
good, that's good — now what platform will he 
run on ? " 

" Independent." 

" Excellent," said Mr. Bagshaw. " Independent, 
that's fine. On a programme of what ? " 

" Just simple honesty and public morality." 

" Come now," said the member, " that's 
splendid : that will help enormously. Honesty 
and public morality ! The very thing ! If 
Drone runs and make a good showing, we win for 
a certainty. Tompkins, you must lose no time 
over this. Can't you manage to get some articles 
in the other papers hinting that at the last 
election we bribed all the voters in the county, 
and that we gave out enough contracts to simply 
pervert the whole constituency. Imply that we 
poured the public money into this county in 
bucketsful and that we are bound to do it again. 
Let Drone have plenty of material of this sort 
and he'll draw off every honest unbiassed vote 
in the Conservative party. 

" My only fear is," continued the old war horse, 

losing some of his animation, " that Drone won't 

run after all. He's said it so often before and never 

has. He hasn't got the money. But we must 

226 



The Great Election 



see to that . Gingham, you know his brother well ; 
you must work it so that we pay Drone's deposit 
and his campaign expenses'. But how hke 
Drone it is to come out at this time ! " 

It was indeed very like Edward Drone to attempt 
so misguided a thing as to come out an Indepen- 
dent candidate in Missinaba County on a platform 
of public honesty. It was just the sort of thing 
that anyone in Mariposa would expect from him. 

Edward Drone was the Rural Dean's younger 
brother, — young Mr. Drone, they used to call 
him, years ago, to distinguish him from the 
rector. He was a somewhat weaker copy of his 
elder brother, with a simple, inefficient face and 
kind blue eyes. Edward Drone was, and always 
had been, a failure. In training, he had been, 
once upon a time, an engineer and built dams 
that broke and bridges that fell down and wharves 
that floated away in the spring floods. He had 
been a manufacturer and failed, had been a 
contractor and failed, and now lived a meagre 
life as a sort of surveyor or land expert on good- 
ness knows what. 

In his political ideas, Edward Drone was and, 
as everybody in Mariposa knew, always had been 
crazy. He used to come up to the autumn 
exercises at the high school and make speeches 
about the ancient Romans and Titus Manlius and 
Quintus Curtius at the same time when John Henry 
227 



Sunshine Sketches 



Bagshaw used to make a speech about the Maple 
Leaf and ask for an extra half holiday. Drone 
used to tell the boys about the lessons to be 
learned from the lives of the truly great, and 
Bagshaw used to talk to them about the lessons 
learned from the lives of the extremely rich. 
Drone used to say that his heart filled whenever 
he thought of the splendid patriotism of the 
ancient Romans, and Bagshaw said that whenever 
he looked out over this wide Dominion his heart 
overflowed. 

Even the youngest boy in the school could tell 
that Drone was foolish. Not even the school 
teachers would have voted for him. 

" What about the Conservatives ? " asked 
Bagshaw presently, " is there any talk yet as to 
who they'll bring out ? " 

Gingham and Mallory Tompkins looked at 
one another. They were almost afraid to speak. 

" Hadn't you heard ? " said Gingham ; " they've 
got their man already." 

" Who is it ? " said Bagshaw quickly. 

" They're going to put up Josh Smith." 

" Great Heaven ! " said Bagshaw, jumping to 
his feet ; " Smith ! the hotel keeper." 

" Yes, sir," said Mr. Gingham, " that's the 
man." 

Do you remember, in history, how Napoleon 
turned pale when he heard that the Duke of 
228 



TJie Great Election 



Wellington was to lead the allies in Belgium ? 
Do you remember how when Themistocles heard 
that Aristogiton was to lead the Spartans, he 
jumped into the sea ? Possibly you don't, but 
it may help you to form some idea of what John 
Henry Bagshaw felt when he heard that the 
Conservatives had selected Josh Smith, proprietor 
of Smith's Hotel. 

You remember Smith. You've seen him there 
on the steps of his hotel, — two hundred and eighty 
pounds in his stockinged feet. You've seen him 
selling liquor after hours through sheer public 
spirit, and you recall how he saved the lives of 
hundreds of people on the day when the steamer 
sank, and how he saved the town from being 
destroyed the night when the Church of England 
Church burnt down. You know that hotel of 
his, too, half way down the street. Smith's 
Northern Health Resort, though already they 
were beginning to call it Smith's British Arms. 

So you can imagine that Bagshaw came as near 
to turning pale as a man in federal politics can. 

" I never knew Smith was a Conservative," 
he said faintly; "he always subscribed to our 
fund.'* 

"He is now," said Mr. Gingham ominously; 
" he says the idea of this reciprocity business 
cuts him to the heart." 

" The infernal liar ! " said Mr. Bagshaw. 

229 



Sunshine Sketches 



There was silence for a few moments. Then 
Bagshaw spoke again. 

" Will Smith have anything else in his platform 
besides the trade question ? " 

" Yes," said Mr. Gingham gloomily, " he will." 

" What is it ? " 

" Temperance and total prohibition ! " 

John Henry Bagshaw sank back in his chair 
as if struck with a club. There let me leave him 
for a chapter. 



230 



Chapter XI 
The Candidacy of Mr. Smith 

BOYS," said Mr. Smith to the two hostlers, 
stepping out on to the sidewalk in front 
of the hotel,—" hoist that there British 
Jack over the place and hoist her up good." 

Then he stood and watched the flag fluttering 
in the wind. 

" Billy," he said to the desk clerk, " get a 
couple more and put them up on the roof of the 
caff behind the hotel. Wire down to the city 
and get a quotation on a hundred of them. 
Take them signs * American Drinks ' out of 
the bar. Put up noo ones with ' British Beer at 
all Hours ; ' clear out the rye whiskey and order 
in Scotch and Irish, and then go up to the printing 
office and get me them placards." 

Then another thought struck Mr. Smith. 

" Say, Billy," he said, '* wire to the city for 
fifty pictures of King George. Get 'em good, 
and get 'em coloured. It don't matter what they 
cost." 

" All right, sir," said Billy. 
231 



Sunshine Sketches 



** And Billy," called Mr. Smith, as still another 
thought struck him (indeed, the moment Mr. 
Smith went into politics you could see these 
thoughts strike him like waves), " get fifty 
pictures of his father, old King Albert." 

"All right, sir." 

" And say, I tell you, while you're at it, get 
some of the old queen, Victorina, if you can. 
Get 'em in mourning, with a harp and one of 
them lions and a three-pointed prong." 

It was on the morning after the Conservative 
Convention. Josh Smith had been chosen the 
candidate. And now the whole town was covered 
with flags and placards and there were bands in 
the streets every evening, and noise and music 
and excitement that went on from morning till 
night. 

Election times are exciting enough even in the 
city. But there the excitement dies down in 
business hours. In Mariposa there aren't any 
business hours and the excitement goes on all 
the time. 

Mr. Smith had carried the Convention before 
him. There had been a feeble attempt to put 
up Nivens. But everybody knew that he was a 
lawyer and a college man and wouldn't have a 
chance by a man with a broader outlook like Josh 
Smith. 

232 



The Candidacy of Mr, Smith 

So the result was that Smith was the candidate 
and there were placards out all over the town 
with SMITH AND BRITISH ALLEGIANCE in 
big letters, and people were wearing badges with 
Mr. Smith's face on one side and King George's 
on the other, and the fruit store next to the hotel 
had been cleaned out and turned into committee 
rooms with a gang of workers smoking cigars 
in it all day and half the night. 

There were other placards, too, with BAGSHAW 
AND LIBERTY, BAGSHAW AND PROS- 
PERITY, VOTE FOR THE OLD MISSINABA 
STANDARD BEARER, and up town beside 
the Mariposa House there were the Bagshaw 
committee rooms with a huge white streamer 
across the street, and with a gang of Bagshaw 
workers smoking their heads off. 

But Mr. Smith had an estimate made which 
showed that nearly two cigars to one were smoked 
in his committee rooms as compared with the 
Liberals. It was the first time in five elections 
that the Conservative had been able to make such 
a showing as that. 

One might mention, too, that there were Drone 
placards out, — five or six of them, — little things 
about the size of a pocket handkerchief, with a 
statement that " Mr. Edward Drone solicit es 
the votes of the electors of Missinaba County." 
But you would never notice them. And when 
233 



Sunshijie Sketches 



Drone tried to put up a streamer across the Main 
Street with DRONE AND HONESTY the wind 
carried it away into the lake. 

The fight was really between Smith and Bag- 
shaw, and everybody knew it from the start. 

I wish that I were able to narrate all the phases 
and the turns of the great contest from the 
opening of the campaign till the final polling day. 
But it would take volumes. 

First of all, of course, the trade question was 
hotly discussed in the two newspapers of Mari- 
posa, and the Newspacket and the Times-Herald 
literally bristled with statistics. Then came 
interviews with the candidates and the expression 
of their convictions in regard to tariff questions. 

" Mr. Smith," said the reporter of the Mariposa 
Newspacket, " we'd like to get your views of the 
effect of the proposed reduction of the differential 
duties." 

" By gosh, Pete," said Mr. Smith, " you can 
search me. Have a cigar." 

" What do you think, Mr. Smith, would be the 
result of lowering the ad valorem British pre- 
ference and admitting American goods at a 
reciprocal rate ? " 

" It's a corker, ain't it ? " answered Mr. Smith. 
" What '11 you take, lager or domestic ? " 

And in that short dialogue, Mr. Smith showed 
that he had instantaneously grasped the whole 
234 



The Candidacy of Mr. Smith 

method of dealing with the press. The interview 
in the paper next day said that Mr. Smith, while 
unwilling to state positively that the principle 
of tariff discrimination was at variance with 
sound fiscal science, was firmly of opinion that 
any reciprocal interchange of tariff preferences 
with the United States must inevitably lead 
to a serious per capita reduction of the national 
industry. 

" Mr. Smith/' said the chairman of a delegation 
of the manufacturers of Mariposa, " what do you 
propose to do in regard to the tariff if you're 
elected ? " 

" Boys," answered Mr. Smith, " I'll put her 
up so darned high they won't never get her down 
again." 

" Mr. Smith," said the chairman of another 
delegation, " I'm an old free trader " 

" Put it there," said Mr. Smith, " so'm I. 
There ain't nothing like it." 

" What do you think about imperial defence ? " 
asked another questioner. 
" Which ? " said Mr. Smith. 
" Imperial defence." 
" Of what ? " 
" Of everything." 

235 



Sunshine Sketches 



" Who says it ? " said Mr. Smith. 
*' Everybody is talking of it." 
" What do the Conservative boys at Ottaway 
think about it ? " answered Mr. Smith. 
" They're all for it." 
" Well, Tm fer it too," said Mr. Smith. 

These little conversations represented only the 
first stage, the argumentative stage of the great 
contest. It was during this period, for example, 
that the Mariposa Newspacket absolutely proved 
that the price of hogs in Mariposa was decimal 
six higher than the price of oranges in Southern 
California and that the average decennial import 
of eggs into Missinaba County had increased four 
decimal six eight two in the last fifteen years 
more than the import of lemons in New Orleans. 

Figures of this kind made the people think. 
Most certainly. 

After all this came the organizing stage and 
after that the big public meetings and the rallies. 
Perhaps you have never seen a county being 
" organized." It is a wonderful sight. First 
of all the Bagshaw men drove through crosswise 
in top buggies and then drove through it again 
lengthwise. Whenever they met a farmer they 
went in and eat a meal with him, and after the 
meal they took him out to the buggy and gave him 
a drink. After that the man's vote was abso- 

236 



The Candidacy of Mr. Smith 

lutely solid until it was tampered with by feeding 
a Conservative. 

In fact, the only way to show a farmer that you 
are in earnest is to go in and eat a meal with him. 
If you can't eat it, he won't vote for you. That is 
the recognized political test. 

But, of course, just as soon as the Bagshaw men 
had begun to get the farming vote solidified, the 
Smith buggies came driving through in the other 
direction, eating meals and distributing cigars and 
turning all the farmers back into Conservatives. 

Here and there you might see Edward Drone, 
the Independent candidate, wandering round 
from farm to farm in the dust of the political 
buggies. To each of the farmers he explained 
that he pledged himself to give no bribes, to spend 
no money and to offer no jobs, and each one of 
them gripped him warmly by the hand and showed 
him the way to the next farm. 

After the organization of the county there came 
the period of the public meetings and the rallies 
and the joint debates between the candidates and 
their supporters. 

I suppose there was no place in the whole 
Dominion where the trade question, — the Recipro- 
city question — was threshed out quite so thoroughly 
and in quite such a national patriotic spirit as in 
Mariposa. For a month, at least, people talked 
of nothing else. A man would stop another in 
237 



SunsJiine Sketches 



the street and tell him that he had read last 
night that the average price of an egg in New 
York was decimal ought one more than the price 
of an egg in Mariposa, and the other man would 
stop the first one later in the day and tell him that 
the average price of a hog in Idaho was point six 
of a cent per pound less (or more, — he couldn't 
remember which for the moment) than the average 
price of beef in Mariposa. 

People lived on figures of this sort, and the man 
who could remember most of them stood out as a 
born leader. 

But of course it was at the public meetings that 
these things were most fully discussed. It would 
take volumes to do full justice to all the meetings 
that they held in Missinaba County. But here 
and there single speeches stood out as master- 
pieces of convincing oratory. Take, for example, 
the speech of John Henry Bagshaw at the Tecumseh 
Corners School House. The Mariposa Times- 
Herald said next day that that speech would go 
down in history, and so it will, — ever so far down. 

Anyone who has heard Bagshaw knows what an 
impressive speaker he is, and on this night when 
he spoke with the quiet dignity of a man old in 
years and anxious only to serve his country, he 
almost surpassed himself. Near the end of his 
speech somebody dropped a pin, and the noise 
it made in falhng fairly rattled the windows. 
238 



TJie Candidacy of Mr. Smith 

" I am an old man now, gentlemen," Bagshaw 
said, " and the time must soon come when I 
must not only leave politics, but must take my way 
towards that goal from which no traveller returns." 

There was a deep hush when Bagshaw said 
this. It was understood to imply that he thought 
of going to the United States. 

" Yes, gentlemen, I am an old man, and I wish, 
when my time comes to go, to depart leaving 
as little animosity behind me as possible. But 
before I ^o go, I want it pretty clearly understood 
that there are more darn scoundrels in the 
Conservative party than ought to be tolerated in 
any decent community. I bear," he continued, 
" malice towards none and I wish to speak with 
gentleness to all, but what I will say is that how 
any set of rational responsible men could nominate 
such a skunk as the Conservative candidate 
passes the bounds of my comprehension. Gentle- 
men, in the present campaign there is no room 
for vindictive abuse. Let us rise to a higher 
level than that. They tell me that my opponent, 
Smith, is a common saloon keeper. Let it pass. 
They tell me that he has stood convicted of horse 
steaHng, that he is a notable perjurer, that he is 
known as the blackest -hearted liar in Missinaba 
County. Let us not speak of it. Let no whisper 
of it pass our Hps. 

" No, gentlemen," continued Bagshaw, pausing 
239 



Sunshine Sketches 



to take a drink of water, " let us rather consider 
this question on the high plane of national wel- 
fare. Let us not think of our own particular 
interests but let us consider the good of the country 
at large. And to do this, let me present to you 
some facts in regard to the price of barley in 
Tecumseh Township." 

Then, amid a deep stillness, Bagshaw read off 
the list of prices of sixteen kinds of grain in sixteen 
different places during sixteen years. 

" But let me turn," Bagshaw went on to another 
phase of the national subject, ** and view for a 
moment the price of marsh hay in Missinaba 
County " 

When Bagshaw sat down that night it was felt 
that a Liberal vote in Tecumseh Township was 
a foregone conclusion. 

But here they hadn't reckoned on the political 
genius of Mr. Smith. When he heard next day 
of the meeting, he summoned some of his leading 
speakers to him and he said : 

" Boys, they're beating us on them statissicks. 
Ourn ain't good enough." 

Then he turned to Nivens and he said : 

" What was them figures you had here the other 
night ? " 

Nivens took out a paper and began reading. 

"Stop," said Mr. Smith, "what was that 
figure for bacon ? " 

240 



The Candidacy of Mr. Smith 

" Fourteen million dollars," said Nivens. 

" Not enough," said Mr. Smith, " make it 
twenty. They'll stand for it, them farmers." 

Nivens changed it. 

" And what was that for hay ? " 

" Two dollars a ton." 

" Shove it up to four," said |Mr. Smith. " And 
I tell you," he added, "if any of them farmers says 
the figures ain't correct, tell them to go to Washing- 
ton and see for themselves ; say that if any man 
wants the proof of your figures let him go over to 
England and ask, — tell him to go straight to 
London and see it all for himself in the books." 

After this, there was no more trouble over 
statistics. I must say though that it is a wonder- 
fully convincing thing to hear trade figures of 
this kind properly handled. Perhaps the best 
man on this sort of thing in the campaign was 
Mullins, the banker. A man of his profession 
simply has to have figures of trade and popula- 
tion and money at his fingers' ends and the effect 
of it in public speaking is wonderful. 

No doubt you have Hstened to speakers of this 
kind, but I question whether you have ever heard 
anything more typical of the sort of effect that 
I allude to than MuHins's speech at the big rally 
at the Fourth Concession. 

Mullins himself, of course, knows the figures 

241 R 



Sunshine Sketches 



so well that he never bothers to write them into 
notes and the effect is very striking. 

" Now, gentlemen," he said very earnestly, 
" how many of you know just to what extent 
the exports of this country have increased in the 
last ten years ? How many could tell what 
per cent, of increase there has been in one decade 
of our national importation ? " — then Mullins 
paused and looked round. Not a man knew it. 

*' I don't recall," he said, " exactly the precise 
amount myself, — not at this moment, — but it 
must be simply tremendous. Or take the ques- 
tion of population," Mullins went on, warming 
up again as a born statistician always does at 
the proximity of figures, " how many of you know, 
how many of you can state, what has been the 
decennial percentage increase in our leading 
cities ? " 

There he paused, and would you believe it, 
not a man could state it. 

" I don't recall the exact figures," said Mullins, 
*' but I have them at home and they are positively 
colossal." 

But just in one phase of the public speaking, 
the candidacy of Mr. Smith received a serious 
set-back. 

It had been arranged that Mr. Smith should 
run on a platform of total prohibition. But 
they soon found that it was a mistake. They 
242 



Tlie Candidacy of Mr. Smifli 

had imported a special speaker from the city, 
a grave man with a white tie, who put his whole 
heart into the work and would take nothing for it 
except his expenses and a sum of money for each 
speech. But beyond the money, I say, he would 
take nothing. 

He spoke one night at the Tecumseh Corners 
social hall at the same time when the Liberal 
meeting was going on at the Tecumseh Corners 
school house. 

" Gentlemen," he said, as he paused half way 
in his speech, — " while we are gathered here in 
earnest discussion, do you know what is hap- 
pening over at the meeting place of our opponents ? 
Do you know that seventeen bottles of rye whiskey 
were sent out from the town this afternoon to 
that innocent and unsuspecting school house ? 
Seventeen bottles of whiskey hidden in between 
the blackboard and the wall, and every single 
man that attends that meeting, — mark my words, 
every single man, — will drink his fill of the 
abominable stuff at the expense of the Liberal 
candidate ! " 

Just as soon as the speaker said this, you could 
see the Smith men at the meeting look at one 
another in injured surprise, and before the speech 
was half over the hall was practically emptied. 

After that the total prohibition plank was 
ch anged and the committee substituted a declara- 

243 



Sunshine Sketches 



tion in favour of such a form of restrictive license 
as should promote temperance while encouraging 
the manufacture of spirituous liquors, and by a 
severe regulation of the liquor traffic should 
place intoxicants only in the hands of those fitted 
to use them. 

Finally there came the great day itself, the 
Election Day that brought, as everybody knows, 
the crowning triumph of Mr. Smith's career. 
There is no need to speak of it at any length, 
because it has become a matter of history. 

In any case, everybody who has ever seen Mari- 
posa knows just what election day is like. The 
shops, of course, are, as a matter of custom, all 
closed, and the bar rooms are all closed by law 
so that you have to go in by the back way. All 
the people are in their best clothes and at first 
they walk up and down the street in a solemn 
way just as they do on the twelfth of July and on 
St. Patrick's Day, before the fun begins. Every- 
body keeps looking in at the different polling 
places to see if anybody else has voted yet, 
because, of course, nobody cares to vote first for 
fear of being fooled after all and voting on the 
wrong side. 

Most of all did the supporters of Mr. Smith, 
acting under his instructions, hang back from the 
poll in the early hours. To Mr. Smith's mind 
244 



The Candidacy of Mr. Smiih 

voting was to be conducted on the same plan 
as bear-shooting. 

" Hold back your votes, boys," he said, " and 
don*t be too eager. Wait till when she begins to 
warm up and then let 'em have it good and hard." 

In each of the polling places in Mariposa there 
is a returning officer and with him are two 
scrutineers, and the electors, I say, peep in and 
out like mice looking into a trap. But if once the 
scrutineers get a man well into the polling booth, 
they push him in behind a little curtain and make 
him vote. The voting, of course, is by secret 
ballot, so that no one except the scrutineers and 
the returning officer and the two or three people 
who may be round the poll can possibly tell how 
a man has voted. 

That's how it comes about that the first results 
are often so contradictory and conflicting. Some- 
times the poll is badly arranged and the scruti- 
neers are unable to see properly just how the 
ballots are being marked and they count up the 
Liberals and Conservatives in different ways. 
Often, too, a voter makes his mark so hurriedly 
and carelessly that they have to pick it out of 
the ballot box and look at it to see what it is. 

I suppose that may have been why it was that 
in Mariposa the results came out at first in such 
a conflicting way. 

Perhaps that was how it was that the first 

245 



Simsliine Shetches 



reports showed that Edward Drone the Inde- 
pendent candidate was certain to win. You 
should have seen how the excitement grew upon 
the streets when the news was circulated. In the 
big rallies and meetings of the Liberals and Con- 
servatives, everybody had pretty well forgotten 
all about Drone, and when the news got round at 
about four o'clock that the Drone vote was carry- 
ing the poll, the people were simply astounded. 
Not that they were not pleased. On the con- 
trary. They were delighted. Everybody came 
up to Drone and shook hands and congratulated 
him and told him that they had known all along 
that what the country wanted was a straight, 
honest, non-partisan representation. The Con- 
servatives said openly that they were sick of 
party, utterly done with it, and the Liberals said 
that they hated it. Already three or four of 
them had taken Drone aside and explained that 
what was needed in the town was a straight, 
clean, non-partisan post-ofhce, built on a piece of 
ground of a strictly non-partisan character, and 
constructed under contracts that were not tainted 
and smirched with party affiliation. Two or three 
men were willing to show to Drone just where a 
piece of ground of this character could be bought. 
They told him too that in the matter of the 
postmastership itself they had nothing against 
Trelawney, the present postmaster, in any 
246 



The Candidacy of Mr. Smith 

personal sense, and would say nothing against 
him except merely that he was utterly and 
hopelessly unfit for his job and that if Drone 
believed, as he had said he did, in a purified 
civil service, he ought to begin by purifying 
Trelawney. 

Already Edward Drone was beginning to feel 
something of what it meant to hold office and there 
was creeping into his manner the quiet self- 
importance which is the first sign of conscious 
power. 

In fact, in that brief half -hour of ofhce. Drone 
had a chance to see something of what it meant. 
Henry McGinnis came to him and asked straight 
out for a job as federal census-taker on the ground 
that he was hard up and had been crippled with 
rheumatism all winter. Nelson Williamson asked 
for the post of wharf master on the plea that he 
had been laid up with sciatica all winter and was 
absolutely fit for nothing. Erasmus Archer asked 
him if he could get his boy Pete into one of the 
departments at Ottawa, and made a strong case 
of it by explaining that he had tried his cussedest 
to get Pete a job anywhere else and it was simply 
impossible. Not that Pete wasn't a willing boy, 
but he was slow, — even his father admitted it, — 
slow as the devil, blast him, and with no head for 
figures and unfortunately he'd never had the 
schooling to bring him on. But if Drone could 
247 



Sunshine Sketches 



get him in at Ottawa, his father truly beheved 
it would be the very place for him. Surely in 
the Indian Department or in the Astronomical 
Branch or in the New Canadian Navy there must 
be any amount of opening for a boy like this ? 
And to all of these requests Drone found himself 
explaining that he would take the matter under 
his very earnest consideration and that they must 
remember that he had to consult his colleagues 
and not merely follow the dictates of his own 
wishes. In fact, if he had ever in his life had any 
envy of Cabinet Ministers, he lost it in this hour. 

But Drone's hour was short. Even before 
the poll had closed in Mariposa, the news came 
sweeping in, true or false, that Bagshaw was 
carrying the county. The second concession 
had gone for Bagshaw in a regular landslide, — 
six votes to only two for Smith, — and all down the 
township line road (where the hay farms are) 
Bagshaw was said to be carrying all before him. 

Just as soon as that new^s went round the town, 
they launched the Mariposa band of the Knights 
of Pythias (every man in it is a Liberal) down the 
Main Street with big red banners in front of it 
with the motto BAGSHAW FOREVER in letters 
a foot high. Such rejoicing and enthusiasm 
began to set in as you never saw. Everybody 
crowded round Bagshaw on the steps of the 
Mariposa House and shook his hand and said 
248 



The Candidacy of Mr. Smith 

they were proud to see the day and that the 
Liberal party was the glory of the Dominion 
and that as for this idea of non-partisan politics 
the very thought of it made them sick. Right 
away in the committee rooms they began to 
organize the demonstration for the evening with 
lantern slides and speeches and they arranged 
for a huge bouquet to be presented to Bagshaw 
on the platform by four little girls (all Liberals) 
all dressed in white. 

And it was just at this juncture, with one hour 
of voting left, that Mr. Smith emerged from his 
committee rooms and turned his voters on the 
town, much as the Duke of Wellington sent the 
whole line to the charge at Waterloo. From 
every committee room and sub-committee room 
they poured out in flocks with blue badges 
fluttering on their coats. 

'* Get at it, boys," said Mr. Smith, " vote and 
keep on voting till they make you quit." 

Then he turned to his campaign assistant. 
" Billy," he said, " wire down to the city that I'm 
elected by an overwhelming majority and tell 
them to wire it right back. Send word by 
telephone to all the polling places in the county 
that the hull town has gone solid Conservative 
and tell them to send the same news back here. 
Get carpenters and tell them to run up a platform 
in front of the hotel ; tell them to take the bar 
249 



Sunshine Sketches 



door clean off its hinges and be all ready the 
minute the poll quits." 

It was that last hour that did it. Just as soon 
as the big posters went up in the windows of the 
Mariposa Newspacket with the telegraphic des- 
patch that Josh Smith was reported in the city 
to be elected, and was followed by the messages 
from all over the county, the voters hesitated 
no longer. They had waited, most of them, all 
through the day, not wanting to make any error 
in their vote, but when they saw the Smith men 
crowding into the polls and heard the news from 
the outside, they went solid in one great stampede, 
and by the time the poll was declared closed at 
five o'clock, there was no shadow of doubt that 
the county was saved and that Josh Smith was 
elected for Missinaba. 

I wish you could have witnessed the scene in 
Mariposa that evening. It would have done your 
heart good, — such joy, such public rejoicing as 
you never saw. It turned out that there wasn't 
really a Liberal in the whole town and that there 
never had been. They were all Conservatives 
and had been for years and years. Men who had 
voted, with pain and sorrow in their hearts, for 
the Liberal party for twenty years, came out that 
evening and owned up straight that they were 
Conservatives. They said they could stand the 
250 



Tlte Candidacy of Mr. Smitli 

strain no longer and simply had to confess. 
Whatever the sacrifice might mean, they were 
prepared to make it. 

Even Mr. Golgotha Gingham, the undertaker, 
came out and admitted that in working for John 
Henry Bagshaw he'd been going straight against 
his conscience. He said that right from the first 
he had had his misgivings . He said it had haunted 
him. Often at night when he would be working 
away quietly, one of these sudden misgivings 
would overcome him so that he could hardly go 
on with his embalming. Why, it appeared that 
on the very first day when reciprocity was pro- 
posed, he had come home and said to Mrs. Ging- 
ham that he thought it simply meant selling out 
the country. And the strange thing was that 
ever so many others had just the same misgivings. 
Trelawney admitted that he had said to Mrs. 
Trelawney that it was madness, and Jeff Thorpe, 
the barber, had, he admitted, gone home to his 
dinner, the first day reciprocity was talked of, 
and said to Mrs. Thorpe that it would simply 
kill business in the country and introduce a cheap, 
shoddy, American form of hair-cut that would 
render true loyalty impossible. To think that 
Mrs. Gingham and Mrs. Trelawney and Mrs. 
Thorpe had known all this for six months and 
kept quiet about it ! Yet I think there were a 
good many Mrs. Ginghams in the country. It 

251 



Sunshine Sketches 



is merely another proof that no woman is fit for 
pontics. 

The demonstration that night in Mariposa will 
never be forgotten. The excitement in the 
streets, the torchlights, the music of the band of 
the Knights of Pythias (an organization which is 
conservative in all but name), and above all the 
speeches and the patriotism. 

They had put up a big platform in front of the 
hotel, and on it were Mr. Smith and his chief 
workers and behind them was a perfect forest 
of flags. They presented a huge bouquet of 
flowers to Mr. Smith, handed to him by four 
little girls in white, — the same four that I spoke 
of above, for it turned out that they were all 
Conservatives. 

Then there were the speeches. Judge Pepper- 
leigh spoke and said that there was no need to 
dwell on the victory that they had achieved, 
because it was history ; there was no occasion 
to speak of what part he himself had played, 
within the limits of his official position, because 
what he had done was henceforth a matter of 
history ; and Nivens, the lawyer, said that he 
would only say just a few words, because any- 
thing that he might have done was now history ; 
later generations, he said, might read it but it was 
not for him to speak of it, because it belonged 
252 



The Candidacy of Mt\ Smith 

now to the history of the country. And after 
them, others spoke in the same strain and all 
refused absolutely to dwell on the subject (for 
more than half an hour) on the ground that 
anything that they might have done was better 
left for future generations to investigate. And 
no doubt this was very true, as to some things, 
anyway. 

Mr. Smith, of course, said nothing. He didn't 
have to, — not for four years, — and he knew it. 



253 



Chapter XII 

L' Envoi, The Train to 
Mariposa 

IT leaves the city every day about five o'clock 
in the evening, the train for Mariposa. 
Strange that you did not know of it, 
though you come from the little town, or did, 
long years ago. 

Odd that you never knew, in all these years, 
that the train was there every afternoon, puffing 
up steam in the city station, and that you might 
have boarded it any day and gone home. No, 
not " home," — of course you couldn't call it 
" home " now ; " home " means that big red 
sandstone house of yours in the costlier part of 
the city. " Home " means, in a way, this 
Mausoleum Club where you sometimes talk with 
me of the times that you had as a boy in 
Mariposa. 

But of course " home " would hardly be the 
word you would apply to the little town, unless 
perhaps, late at night, when you'd been sitting 
reading in a quiet corner somewhere such a 
book as the present one. 

255 



Sunshine Sketches 



Naturally you don't know of the Mariposa 
train now. Years ago , when you first came to the 
city as a boy with your way to make, you knew of 
it well enough, only too well. The price of a 
ticket counted in those days, and though you knew 
of the train you couldn't take it, but sometimes 
from sheer homesickness you used to wander 
down to the station on a Friday afternoon after 
your work, and watch the Mariposa people 
getting on the train and wish that you could go. 

Why, you knew that train at one time better, 
I suppose, than any other single thing in the city, 
and loved it too for the little town in the sun- 
shine that it ran to. 

Do you remember how when you first began 
to make money you used to plan that just as 
soon as you were rich, really rich, you'd go back 
home again to the little town and build a great 
big house with a fine verandah, — no stint about 
it, the best that money could buy, planed lumber, 
every square foot of it and a fine picket fence 
in front of it. 

It was to be one of the grandest and finest 
houses that thought could conceive, much finer, 
in true reality, than that vast palace of sandstone 
with the porte cochere and the sweeping conser- 
vatories that you afterwards built in the costlier 
part of the city. 

But if you have half forgotten Mariposa, and 
256 



The Train to Mariposa 

long since lost the way to it, you are only like the 
greater part of the men here in this Mausoleum 
Club in the city. Would you believe it that 
practically every one of them came from Mariposa 
once upon a time, and that there isn't one of them 
that doesn't sometimes dream in the dull quiet 
of the long evening here in the club, that some day 
he will go back and see the place. 

They all do. Only they're half ashamed to 
own it. 

Ask your neighbour there at the next table 
whether the partridge that they sometimes serve 
to you here can be compared for a moment to 
the birds that he and you, or he and some one 
else, used to shoot as boys in the spruce thickets 
along the lake. Ask him if he ever tasted duck 
that could for a moment be compared to the 
black ducks in the rice marsh along the Ossawippi. 
And as for fish, and fishing, — no, don't ask him 
about that, for if he ever starts telling you of the 
chub they used to catch below the mill dam and 
the green bass that used to lie in the water- 
shadow of the rocks beside the Indian's Island, 
not even the long dull evening in this club would 
be long enough for the telling of it. 

But no wonder they don't know about the five 

o'clock train for Mariposa. Very few people 

know about it. Hundreds of them know that 

there is a train that goes out at five o'clock, but 

257 s 



Sunshine Sketches 



they mistake it. Ever so many of them think 
it's just a suburban train. Lots of people that 
take it every day think it's only the train to the 
golf grounds, but the joke is that after it passes 
out of the city and the suburbs and the golf 
grounds, it turns itself little by little into the 
Mariposa train, thundering and pounding towards 
the north with hemlock sparks pouring out into 
the darkness from the funnel of it. 

Of course you can't tell it just at first. All 
those people that are crowding into it with golf 
clubs, and wearing knickerbockers and flat caps, 
would deceive anybody. That crowd of suburban 
people going home on commutation tickets and 
sometimes standing thick in the aisles, those are, 
of course, not Mariposa people. But look round 
a little bit and you'll find them easily enough. 
Here and there in the crowd those people with the 
clothes that are perfectly all right and yet look 
odd in some way, the women with the peculiar 
hats and the — what do you say ? — last year's 
fashions ? Ah yes, of course, that must be 
it. 

Any^vay, those are the Mariposa people all 
right enough. That man with the two-dollar 
panama and the glaring spectacles is one of the 
greatest judges that ever adorned the bench of 
Missinaba County. That clerical gentleman with 
the wide black hat, who is explaining to the man 
258 



The Train to Mariposa 

with him the marvellous mechanism of the new air 
brake (one of the most conspicuous illustrations 
of the divine structure of the physical universe) , 
surely you have seen him before. Mariposa 
people ! Oh yes, there are any number of them 
on the train every day. 

But of course you hardly recognize them while 
the train is still passing through the suburbs 
and the golf district and the outlying parts of 
the city area. But wait a little, and you will see 
that when the city is well behind you, bit by bit 
the train changes its character. The electric 
locomotive that took you through the city tunnels 
is off now and the old wood engine is hitched on in 
its place. I suppose, very probably, you haven't 
seen one of these wood engines since you were a 
boy forty years ago, — the old engine with a wide 
top like a hat on its funnel, and with sparks 
enough to light up a suit for damages once in 
every mile. 

Do you see, too, that the trim little cars that 
came out of the city on the electric suburban ex- 
press are being discarded now at the way stations, 
one by one, and in their place is the old familiar 
car with the stuff cushions in red plush (how 
gorgeous it once seemed !) and with a box stove 
set up in one end of it? The stove is burning 
furiously at its sticks this autumn evening, for 
the air sets in chill as you get clear away from 
259 



Sunshine Sketches 



the city and are rising up to the higher ground 
of the country of the pines and the lakes. 

Look from the window as you go. The city 
is far behind now and right and left of you there 
are trim farms with elms and maples near them 
and with tall windmills beside the bams that 
you can still see in the gathering dusk. There 
is a dull red light from the windows of the farm- 
stead. It must be comfortable there after the 
roar and clatter of the city, and only think of the 
still quiet of it. 

As you sit back half dreaming in the car, you 
keep wondering why it is that you never came 
up before in all these years. Ever so many 
times you planned that just as soon as the rush 
and strain of business eased up a little, you would 
take the train and go back to the little town to 
see what it was like now, and if things had changed 
much since your day. But each time when your 
holidays came, somehow you changed your mind 
and went down to Naragansett or Nagahuckett or 
Nagasomething, and left over the visit to Mariposa 
for another time. 

It is almost night now. You can still see the 
trees and the fences and the farmsteads, but they 
are fading fast in the twilight. They have 
lengthened out the train by this time with a 
string of flat cars and freight cars between where 
we are sitting and the engine. But at every 
260 



The Train to Mariposa 

crossway we can hear the long muffled roar of the 
whistle, dying to a melancholy wail that echoes 
into the woods ; the woods, I say, for the farms 
are thinning out and the track plunges here and 
there into great stretches of bush, — tall tamerack 
and red scrub willow and with a tangled under- 
growth of brush that has defied for two genera- 
tions all attempts to clear it into the form of 
fields. 

Why, look, that great space that seems to open 
out in the half -dark of the falling evening, — ^why, 
surely yes, — Lake Ossawippi the big lake, as they 
used to call it, from which the river runs down 
to the smaller lake, — Lake Wissanotti, — ^where 
the town of Mariposa has lain waiting for you there 
for thirty years. 

This is Lake Ossawippi surely enough. You 
would know it anywhere by the broad, still, 
black water with hardly a ripple, and with the 
grip of the coming frost already on it. Such a 
great sheet of blackness it looks as the train 
thunders along the side, swinging the curve of 
the embankment at a breakneck speed as it 
rounds the corner of the lake. 

How fast the train goes this autumn night ! 
You have travelled, I know you have, in the 
Empire State Express, and the New Limited and 
the Maritime Express that holds the record of 
six hundred whirling miles from Paris to Marseilles^ 
261 



Sunshine Sketches 



But what are they to this, this mad career, this 
breakneck speed, this thundering roar of the 
Mariposa local driving hard to its home ! Don't 
tell me that the speed is only twenty-five miles 
an hour. I don't care what it is. I tell you, and 
you can prove it for yourself if you will, that that 
train of mingled flat cars and coaches that goes 
tearing into the night, its engine whistle shrieking 
out its warning into the silent woods and echoing 
over the dull still lake, is the fastest train in the 
whole world. 

Yes, and the best too, — the most comfortable, 
the most reliable, the most luxurious and the 
speediest train that ever turned a wheel. 

And the most genial, the most sociable too. 
See how the passengers all turn and talk to one 
another now as they get nearer and nearer to the 
little town. That dull reserve that seemed to 
hold the passengers in the electric suburban has 
clean vanished and gone. They are talking, — 
listen, — of the harvest, and the late election, and 
of how the local member is mentioned for the 
cabinet and all the old familiar topics of the sort. 
Already the conductor has changed his glazed 
hat for an ordinary round Christie and you can 
hear the passengers calling him and the brakes- 
man " Bill " and " Sam " as if they were all one 
family. 

What is it now — nine thirty ? Ah, then we 
262 



The Train to Mariposa 

must be nearing the town, — this big bush that we 
are passing through, you remember it surely as 
the great swamp just this side of the bridge over 
the Ossawippi ? There is the bridge itself, and 
the long roar of the train as it rushes sounding 
over the trestle work that rises above the marsh. 
Hear the clatter as we pass the semaphores and 
the switch lights ! We must be close in now ! 

What ? it feels nervous and strange to be coming 
here again after all these years ? It must indeed. 
No, don't bother to look at the reflection of your 
face in the window-pane shadowed by the night 
outside. Nobody could tell you now after all these 
years. Your face has changed in these long years 
of money-getting in the city. Perhaps if you had 
come back now and again, just at odd times, it 
wouldn't have been so. 

There, — you hear it ? — the long whistle of the 
locomotive, one, two, three ! You feel the sharp 
slackening of the train as it swings round the curve 
of the last embankment that brings it to the 
Mariposa station. See, too, as we round the 
curve, the row of the flashing lights, the bright 
windows of the depot. 

How vivid and plain it all is. Just as it used 
to be thirty years ago. There is the string of the 
hotel 'buses, drawn up all ready for the train, 
and as the train rounds in and stops hissing and 
panting at the platform, you can hear above all 
263 



Sunshine Sketches 



other sounds the cry of the brakesmen and the 
porters : 

" MARIPOSA ! MARIPOSA ! " 

And as we listen, the cry grows fainter and 

fainter in our ears and we are sitting here again 

n the leather chairs of the Mausoleum Club, 

talking of the little Town in the Sunshine that once 

we knew. 



264 



THE DANGEROUS AGE 

BY 

Karin Michaelis 

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THE UNKNOWN WOMAN 

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WINGS OF DESIRE 

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most unusual story and makes a good impression." 

— New York Evening Globe 

"Three of the greatest merits that any book can have can- 
not be denied to this story: it is a book of good faith; it is a 
book of vital actuality, and it is a book for men." 

— New York Herald 

"The pictures of life and labor are admirably well done, 
and if the book does preach socialism, it preaches it logically and 
convincingly." — James L. Ford in New York Herald 

"To read this story that quivers with the pathos and passion 
of life is to get a keener and kindlier vision of our mortal ex- 
istence."— 5w^a/o Commercial 

"Those who are interested in stories with a sociological 
trend will be charmed with this history, minute and graphic, of 
a ploughboy." — Buffalo Express 

"A record of a young man's life — one of the most popular 
themes of today. The story has pathos, sincerity of intention, 
and all the multiplied details of^ realism that make happy the 
heart of the reader on Socialistic problems." 

— Baltimore Evening News 



JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK 



at 



AWAKENING 

BY 

Maud Diver 

Author of "Candles in the Wind," "Captain Des- 
mond, V.C." and "The Great Amulet" 

Cloth i2mo $1-20 net Postage 12 cents 

"A story of very human interest, a careful study well 
thought out in all its possibilities." — Boston Evening Transcript 

"A most delightful and enjoyable story." — Boston Times 

"This is a story told with a good deal of poesy and power, 
a story disclosing and suggesting much of the inner life of two 
great civiUzations." — New York American 

"Apart from its romantic interest the book has good literary 
style." — New York Herald 

"Mrs. Diver's sympathetic appreciation of the Indian point 
of view is remarkable and could only come from long experi- 
ence." — Providence Journal 

"Even the most enthusiastic admirer of Maud Diver's pre- 
vious works will not hesitate to say that 'Awakening' is the 
greatest book she has yet given us." — Cleveland Town Topics 

"The author is a word painter and her story gives her plenty 
of opportunity to show her talent. Many of the situations are 
exquisitely tendered and are brought out with a delicacy of touch 
that is worthy of a poet." — Albany Argus 

"Like the other works by the same author, 'Awakening' is 
marked by excellent diction and delicate touch of descriptive 
powers." — Chicago Journal 

"The story is engrossing." — Detroit Free Press 



JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK 



THE BEACON 

BY 

Eden Phillpotts 

Author of 'The Thief of Virtue," "Demeter's 
Daughter," etc. 

Cloth i2mo $1-30 net Postage 12 cents 

"One is lost in the beauty of imagination of the word paint- 
ings of Dartmoor, and absorbed by the thoughtful study of hu- 
man nature." — The Outlook 

"The book has the usual excellences of clearness and pic- 
turesqueness." — The Nation 

"We seldom see such strong buffets of wit in present day 
stories. The book has greatly pleased us." — New York Sun 

"The dramatic power of plot and characters of the tale are 
undeniable. Mr. Phillpotts remains an admirable artist in the 
maturity of his powers." — New York Tribune 

"The tale in its mingled tragedy and comedy is admirable 
and holds the attention. The people are alive and interesting. 
This book ranks high." — New York Herald 

"No one who has once begun to read 'The Beacon* will fail 
to read eagerly to the end." — Nezv York Evening Mail 

"As a prose poem of great beauty, those parts that sing the 
beauty of Cosdon will delight the reader." — Chicago Evening Post 

"A problem worked out in a way that must fascinate any 
thoughtful reader." — Chicago Record HCrald 

"There is a flavor of a whole portion of humanity in Mr. 
Phillpotts' men of the soil that makes his novels much more 
than passing fiction. There is also the aroma, the color, the aus- 
terity of the moors that creates an atmosphere long remembered. 
Both will be found at their best in 'The Beacon.' " 

— Boston Herald 



JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK 



MANALIVE 

BY 

Gilbert K. Chesterton 

Author of "The Innocence of Father Brown," 
*'Herectics," ''Orthodoxy," etc. 

Cloth i2mo $1-30 net Postage 12 cents 

Frontispiece and Jacket Illustration by Will Foster 

"Mr. Chesterton has undertaken in this quaint narrative to 
make burlesque the vehicle of a sermon and a philosophy. It 
is all a part of the author's war upon artificial attitudes which 
enclose the living men like a shell and make for human purposes 
a dead man of him. He speaks here in a parable — a parable of 
his own kind, having about it a broad waggishness like that of 
Mr. Punch and a distinct flavor of that sort of low comedy which 
one finds in Dickens and Shakespeare. You are likely to find, 
before you are done with the parable, that there has been forced 
upon your attention a possible view of the life worth living. 
'Manalive' is a Teterpantheistic' novel full of Chestertonisms." 

— New York Times 

"One of the oddest books Mr. Chesterton has yet given us." 

— New York Evening Globe 

"The fun of the book (and there is plenty of it) comes quite 
as much from the extraordinary and improbable characters as 
from the situations. Epigrams, witticisms, odd fancies, queer 
conceits, singular whimsies, follow after one another in quick 
succession." — Brooklyn Eagle 

"One of the most humorous tales of modern fiction, com- 
bined with a very tender and appealing love story." 

— Cleveland Plain Dealer 

"The book is certain to have a wide circulation, not only 
because of the name of the aut'.-or attached to it, but because 
of its own intrinsic worth." — Buffalo Commercial 

"There can be no doubt as to the iridescent brilliance of the 
book. Page after page — full of caustic satire, humorous sally and 
profound epigram — fairlv bristles v/ith merriment. The book is 
a compact mass of scintillating wit." — Philadelphia Public Ledger 



JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK 



THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN 

BY 

Gilbert K. Chesterton 

Author of "Manalive," "Orthodoxy," "Heretics," etc. 

Cloth i2mo $1-30 net Postage 12 cents 

Illustrations by Will Foster 

"Mr. Chesterton writes extremely good detective stories — 
detective stories the more fascinating because if there is about 
them a hint of irony, there is also more than a hint of poetry 
and a shadow — or, if you will, a glow — of the mystic and the 
supernatural." — N^w York Times 

"The stories are entertaining; the mysteries and their solu- 
tions are ingenius and interesting." — New York Sun 

"The stories are vastly entertaining, and excellent specimens 
of literary craftsmanship at the same time." — The Outlook 

"Never were philosophy, ethics and religion preached in a 
more unusual manner." — Chicago Tribune 

"In their own Chestertonic realm, the stories are personal 
and convincing; full, too, of the charm of landscape. The author 
arranges his scenes and marshals his characters with an artistic 
eye worthy of a Poe." — Chicago Evening Post 

"The stories have a charming variety, and interest in them 
is awakened more insidiously than in the average story dealing 
with the detection of crime." — Chicago Record Herald 

"Throughout these meteoric adventures there is, of course, 
besides Father Brown a lot of Mr. Chesterton himself, scintillat- 
ing along the way, to the fascination and bedazzlement of the 
reader." — Washington Evening Star 

"The stories are of the dashing and brilliant kind that 
Stevenson invented — exciting tales told in an artistic manner." 

— Albany Argus 



JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK 



THE GLORY OF CLEMENTINA 

BY 

William J. Locke 

Author of "The Beloved Vagabond," ''Simon the 

Jester," etc. 

Cloth i2mo $1-30 net Postage 12 cents 

Illustrations by Arthur I. Keller 

"Mr. Locke has succeeded in uniting with the firm careful- 
ness of his early work the rapid, fluent, vibrating style that 
makes his later books so delightful ; therefore it is easy to make 
the deduction that 'Clementina' is the best piece of work he has 
done." — New York Evening Sun 

"Among the novels of the past five years no books have more 
consistently produced an effect at once certain, satisfactory and 
delightful than those of William J. Locke. This latest addition 
to his shelf is full of life and laughter and the love not only of 
man for woman but of man for man and for humanity. Mr. 
Locke is a born story-teller and a master of the art of ex- 
pression." — The Outlook 

"The book contains a mass of good material, with original 
characterization, and is written in a style piquant and clever." 

— The Literary Digest 

"A story containing the essence of humanity, with an abun- 
dance of sensible and sensitive, casual and unobtrusive com- 
mentary upon life and man, and especially upon woman." 

— Boston Evening Transcript 

"It contains even more of the popular qualities than are us- 
ually associated with the writings of this noted author." 

— Boston Times 

"Mr. Locke's flights into the realms of fancy have been a 
delight to many readers. He has a lightness of touch that is 
entirely captivating, and his remarkable characterization of in- 
consequent people gives them a reality that is very insistent." 

— Baltimore Evening Sun 

"Never has he drawn so deeply from that well that is the 
human heart; never so near those invisible heights which are 
the soul; and. if we are not altogether mistaken, The Glory of 
Clementina' will also prove to be that of its author." 

— Baltimore News 

"A fascinating story with delicate, whimsical touches." 

— Albany Times-Union 

'The book seems destined to live longer than any written 
by the author to date, because it is so sane and so fundamen- 
tallv true." — Philadelphia Enquirer 

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK 



TALK OF THE TOWN 

BY 

Mrs. John Lane 

Author of "The Champagne Standard," "According; 
to Maria," etc. 

Cloth i2mo $1-25 net Postage 12 cents 

"A light, bubbling, tolerant comment on the world and the 
way it wags by one who looks upon life with an ever-ready and 
optimistic humor — such a book is 'Talk of the Town.' Mrs. Lane 
is a delightfully clever woman, and her book can be heartily 
recommended to dispel any chronic or acute attack of 'grouch.'" 

— Boston Transcript 

"These essays have a feeling as well as a form. There is 
the essential lightness of touch, a piquant fancy, a delicate hu- 
mor, an aptness at word-structure and painting, a playful wit, 
and vision in criticism. We assure the reader of a literary treat 
in this extremely readable book." — Boston Herald 

"Many of these little essays on the fads and fancies of fad- 
dish people have a touch of philosophy mingled with a kindly 
humor which have to be read to be appreciated." — Boston Globe 

"A plainly told, attractive bit of writing." 

— Baltimore Evening Sun 

"One reads these essays all through with thorough enjoy- 
ment of their original, sparkling, open qualities, of their kindly 
feeling and human outlook." — Washington Evening Star 

"Every page is both sprightly and suggestive, and the spark- 
ling book will please alike those who desire to think and to 
smile." — Chicago Record Herald 

"Mrs. John Lane in her 'Talk of the Town' continues the 
sort of bright and agreeable comment and criticism and sugges- 
tion that made her earlier volume, 'The Champagne Standard/ 
so favorably known to a wide circle of readers." — The Dial 

"These sketches contain many bright sallies and witticisms, 
in no way ill-natured, aimed at the foibles of today." 

— Newark Evening News 



JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK 



ZULEIKA DOBSON 

BY 

Max Beerbohm 

Author of "The Happy Hpyocrite," '' 
Again," etc. 

Cloth i2mo $1-30 net Postage 12 cents 

"Very brilliant satire." — New York Herald 

"Contains many beautiful tributes to Oxford, born of the 
affection of an Oxford man, and shows a fine vision for Na- 
ture's more hidden manifestations. We shall laugh with this 
book and perhaps cry with it, for Mr. Beerbohm plays upon a 
magic flute. Certainly the book is his masterpiece, and because 
it is his first novel it points the way to the field of his future 
success." — Boston Herald 

"It is as clever as it can be, as witty and as wise. It is a 
book to read out loud, for you want others to enjoy it with 
you." — Chicago Tribune 

"Piques one's curiosity to a continual alertness — a perpetual 
feeling of 'What next?' To read it is an adventure not quite 
like any other in literature — an experience not on any account 
to be missed." — Chicago Evening Post 

"A satire of the gravest, gayest' sort, with wit that needs no 
diagrams and humor that is not too obvious." 

— Chicago Record Herald 

"A little of the late W. S. Gilbert, a little of Mr. Chesterton, 
a hint of Bernard Shaw, and a great deal of Max Beerbohm him- 
self — that is what 'Zuleika Dobson' is." — Chicago Tribune 

"It is all delightful nonsense." — Springfield Republican 

"He has never written anything cleverer than this." 

— Providence Journal 



JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK 



PERPETUA 

BY 

DION CLAYTON CALTHROP 

12mo. Cloth. $1.30 net Postage, 12 cents 

**A fantastic tale of studio and travel life in Europe with 
a diminutive model as the heroine. Perpetua is a charming 
personality and distinctly vi^orth reading about. " 

— Baltimore Evening Sun 

''It really is a delightful romance, so full of tender senti- 
ment and gentle humor and quiet pathos as to afford genuine 
refreshment to the world-weary spirit; and, withal, endowed 
with a good plot, well handled." — Chicago Record-Herald 

That indefinable, elusive quality called style, atmosphere 
— what you will — holds your heart strings in an unrelaxing 
grip. One does not often hit upon a book like *Perpetua/ 
and when one does one should treasure it." 

— New York Herald 

The whole is finely woven, making a compact, beauti- 
ful story, with a wonderful girl as the central character. 
Perpetua' is a romance that will allow no reader to relax his 
attention until the final words are scanned. ' ' 

— Philadelphia Record 

*'A genial humor permeates this likeable little story." 

— Detroit Free Press 

*'The story is written in beautiful, poetic language, and 
is replete with exquisite, fanciful ideas and descriptions. As 
sweet and charming as its own piquant heroine — full of a 
tender humor and a happy irresponsibility that are irresistible. 

— Pittsburg Dispatch 



JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK 



THE COMPLETE WORKS 

OF 

WILLIAM J. LOCKE 

"Life is a glorious thing.'* — fT. J. Locke 

** ii you wish to be lifted out of the petty cares of to-day, read one 
of Locke's novels. You may select any from the following titles 
and be certain of meeting some new and delightful friends. His 
characters are worth knowing. ' ' — Baltimore Sun. 

The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne The Demagogue and Lady Phayre 

At the Gate of Samaria The Beloved Vagabond 

A Study in Shadows The ^A^hite Dove 

Simon the Jester The Usurper 

Where Love Is Septimus 

Derelicts Idols 

The Glory of Clementina 

12mo. Cloth. $1.50 each . 

Thirteen volumes bound in green cloth. Uniform edition In box. 
' $29.00 per set. Half Morocco $50.00 net. Express prepaid, 

Simon the Jester 

(Profusely illustrated by James Montgomery Flagg) 
**It has all the charm and surprise of his famous * Simple Septimus.* 
It is a novel full of wit and action and life. The characters are all 
out-of-the-ordinary and splendidly depicted; and the end is an 
artistic triumph — a fitting climax for a story that's full of charm 
and surprise. ' * — American Magazine, 

The Beloved Vagabond 

** *The Beloved Vagabond* Is a gently- written, fascinating tale. 
Make his acquaintance some dreary, rain-soaked evening and find 
the vagabond nerve-thrilling In your own heart. '* 

— Chicago Record-Herald, 

Septimus (illustrated by James Montgomery Flagg) 

** Septimus is the joy of the year. *' — American Magazine. 

The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne 

*'One of those rare and much-to-be-desired stories which keep one 
divided between an interested impatience to get on and an Irresis- 
tible temptation to linger for full enjoyment by the way. *' — Life. 

Where Love Is 

" One of those unusual novels of which the end is as good as the 
beginning. * ' — Neiv York Globe. 



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